Skunkworks actually had a hand in the design of the aircraft in maverick, and they've talked about an sr-71 follow up with similar lines in the past. There's a good reason the plane looks right lol.

In the wake of NASA’s successful launch of their Space launch system rocket, spacex has updated their falcon heavy website: pic.twitter.com/Em2sTaAAGE

— David Willis (@ThePrimalDino) November 18, 2022

ABATTBQ11 said:

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As already noted, that is exactly what Musk envisions for SpaceX and why they will ultimately surpass NASA.

Musk is no stranger to risk, and I think everyone who would venture to space knows the risks as well. That said, SpaceX has built up a very reliable track record with falcon rockets that I see translating to starship. The difference between NASA and a private company is that NASA generally lacks accountability. Look at Challenger. They killed the crew because they insisted on launching when told by Morton Thiokol's engineers that they shouldn't, but afterwards the decision making paradigm and willingness to accept anomalies so long as missions were deemed successful didn't change. That's how Columbia was lost as well. With Challenger, they had launch weather colder than they'd ever had it. With Columbia, they had a chunk of foam larger than any that had struck the orbiter before. Very different accidents, but essentially the same root cause because the managers and decision makers at NASA continued the culture of, "Well, this is the worst we've seen it, but it didn't kill us last time so we'll keep going." Yet, NASA is still around. It's not because of some noble mission, it's because they're a part of the government and there is a multi-year delay between ****ups and concluding investigations. In that time, funding is allocated and new endeavors are started, and no one is going to kill the organization and its current work over something that happened years ago and they've since "fixed".

SpaceX is also taking on the risk already as a services provider when they launch dragon capsules. They're responsible for people. They're also responsible for expensive payloads. They're not strangers here, and I see nothing doing them from going to Mars or the moon simply because they can. Even if they fail, and people die, I doubt they're going to get the vitriol or disdain you expect. Any such mission is going to be viewed as exploratory and dangerous by default. It doesn't matter who does it or why.

SpaceX has to operate as a business, yes, but as of now it is private and will remain so. There is money to be made beyond LEO. I could see a day in the next century or two where SpaceX is extracting raw materials from other planets or asteroids or operates 0g manufacturing facilities beyond LEO. Going to the moon and Mars would be excellent R&D opportunities for sized SpaceX to test technologies and processes to support those ventures. There IS a business case.

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All very fair points. I think it will definitely be interesting to see. I know when SpaceX really started to make a name for itself, I saw it as a competitor of NASA.

But, now with the Dragon capsule being used to transport crew and supplies to the ISS and the additional lunar program contracts that have been awarded, it definitely seems to be a much more collaborative and a mutually beneficial arrangement.

So, there is a bit of a conflict there. I think as long as SpaceX is taking NASA money, NASA is going to have control/influence of what the company does, especially when it comes to any overlap with missions that NASA sees itself doing.

That's the whole point I was trying to get at with my comments about revenue. Yes, SpaceX earns revenue from NASA contracts, but as long as they are taking that money, it comes with limitations and strings attached. The other alternative would be for SpaceX to stop taking NASA money, but (at least for now) that is a bad business decision.

People talk about SpaceX making NASA look bad, but when it comes to being the next to put actual boots on the moon or first on Mars, I just don't think NASA is going to let anyone else do that - even it means delays and higher costs. They will let SpaceX help, but you know NASA wants all the accolades. I'm not saying that's right or wrong...it just is. NASA wants to send people back to the moon and beyond just as much for the fame/glory/ego boost (whatever you want to call it) as they do for the scientific and technological rewards. I'm certain that "ego" has been a big reason why the Artemis program as continued to move forward despite the delays and cost over-runs (that and the whole "too big to fail" premise). I'm not sure they are willing to concede that completely to Musk/SpaceX (or any other private entity), but it's certainly not out of the realm of possibility.

The other complicating factor is, as you mentioned, much of the opportunity is decades (or as you even said, centuries) in the future. SpaceX started as Musk's altruistic venture, but at some point it's going to get too big and make too much money for that (maybe it already has). Look at any industry out there...short term gains are prioritized over potential long-term rewards, even if it means the company cuts off its nose to spite its face. Musk is the CEO, but he has a board of directors and investors that he has to answer too. I'm sure there are a lot of people who want to get rich from their affiliation with the company, and let's face it, Musk isn't making too many friends right now. What's going on with Twitter should be irrelevant to SpaceX, but in our current societal climate, we all know that's not true. This all ties into the risk - along with disdain/public disapproval for failures, company leadership may want to mitigate risk to protect investments and/or profits.

The impression I've gotten from my Dad is the culture at NASA has shifted. They made a lot of bad decisions with both disasters, and it seems like the pendulum has swung the other way and they have possibly become too risk-averse considering the inherent danger of what they want to do. Time will only tell with that.

The culture may have shifted, but it's not stopping them from being force to use the same defective designs that killed 7 people on on shuttle, nor sticking to contractors that are known to produce bug ridden and dangerous spacecraft when their feet are held to the fire on fixed price contracting.

Dragon is not a NASA operated space craft, nor is its only customer NASA. It has already flown once devoid of nasa personnel, and is already scheduled to do so again, including an EVA.

Bridenstein brought a culture shift certainly, but the slip back towards cost + and politically driven make work programs is creeping back in. Even the current NASA director is catching hell for his desire to move the construction of MLS 2( which is expected to cost billions, and is already defective) to fixed price in an effort to reduce bloat. NASA has even admitted that SLS is too expensive to fly much beyond current plans, and has been seeking proposals to simplify and make the booster cheaper.

In the end, SLS is the Senate Launch System. Until we disconnect political interference, it will never be practical, and the safety upgrades necessary are going to be blocked.

You commented on me calling orion old tech btw: I'm referencing the fact it has been in development muching longer than 2011, and use 80s era technology in it's flight systems. It quite literally IS old technology amalgamated into a capsule. In a lot of ways its the Apollo gen 2 capsule that should have been instead of the shuttle, when we should be looking at a third gen exploration capsule. I'm sure it's a good spacecraft, but it's nowhere nears as capable for the mass as it should be.

I also reccomend doing some real research on SpaceXs history. You still seem to be focused on Musk and SpaceX being profit driven

I know Musk wasn't profit-driven when he created the company (and probably still isn't). The cynic in me thinks it's inevitable that it will become profit-driven - it will get too big, involve too many people who put money first, and Musk isn't going to live forever. At some point that history will be irrelevant.

Zach Golden has a new video out that is great so far for those interested;

Some Rocket Pron

NASA is trying to stop people with media access from photographing the MLS, citing ITAR...

Funny, the ICPS umbilical plates are the only things visible at the ranges amateurs with cameras out are able to see, and you can get high res photos of them elsewhere.

Artemis Go for lunar flyby
https://parabolicarc.com/2022/11/20/artemis-i-go-for-first-lunar-flyby-on-monday-morning/

(times adjusted for CST)

Quote:

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HOUSTON (NASA PR) On Saturday, Nov. 19, the Mission Management Team polled "go" for Orion's outbound powered flyby past the Moon. NASA will cover the flyby live on NASA TV, the agency's website, and the NASA app starting at 6:15 a.m. CST Monday, Nov. 21. The burn is planned for 6:44 a.m. Orion will lose communication with Earth as it passes behind the Moon from 6:25 a.m. through 6:59 a.m., making its closest approach of approximately 80 miles from the surface at 6:57 a.m.

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It's probably some low-level GS7 type of press officer blocking more pictures, but the irony is we should absolutely be praying the Chinese for some reason want to copy the SLS.

I was hoping to get some Lunar surface images from the flyby

AgBQ-00 said:

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I was hoping to get some Lunar surface images from the flyby

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There was no telemetry from Orion during the flyby since it was behind the moon. Hopefully it will be uploading high quality video of the flyby at closest approach soon.

The next Artemis pass of the moon will be December 5, when the moon is in sunlight. Orion should be able to get some good high-res pictures of the Apollo landing sites as a result.

So we can put the doubters to bed after these pics come out?

They'll claim the footage is cgi. There is no reasoning with those people.

BMach said:

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So we can put the doubters to bed after these pics come out?

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They already say the LRO photos of the Apollo sites are fake.

BMach said:

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So we can put the doubters to bed after these pics come out?

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Nah, Kyrie has already posted that these pics prove that the Earth and Moon are flat.

New World Ag said:

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BMach said:

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So we can put the doubters to bed after these pics come out?

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They already say the LRO photos of the Apollo sites are fake.

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Unfortunately, in an era when so many conspiracy theories are proven right (election fraud, hunter laptop, wuhan flu from a fauci lab, etc), it makes all such theorists on different/actually crazy 'theories' seem credible/empowered.

Faustus said:

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BMach said:

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So we can put the doubters to bed after these pics come out?

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Nah, Kyrie has already that these pics prove that the Earth and Moon are flat.

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I mean look at how much bigger the moon is than the earth, what other lies are they telling us??

And where are all the stars?

lb3 said:

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And where are all the stars?

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"astronomers HATE him"

Ag_of_08 said:

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NASA is trying to stop people with media access from photographing the MLS, citing ITAR...

Funny, the ICPS umbilical plates are the only things visible at the ranges amateurs with cameras out are able to see, and you can get high res photos of them elsewhere.

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YouTube video I watched was claiming/ suspecting the MLS suffered significant damage and NASA doesn't want the public to get access to photos outside of their official channels.

It's being speculated. They also won't let people with cameras inside the LC out to retrieve their cameras at this point, unless that has been changed recently.

They've retrieved all cameras

Edit... Nothing to see here, I got out over my skis

Is the photo ban still in place?

Of the tower yes

Interesting to read/learn about the notional Webb successor/next big space based telescope.

Quote:

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The Sagan Observatory would be a 12-meter class space telescope, that's 40 feet for us Americans. Here's what it looks like compared to Hubble and JWST. As you can see, it's a whopper, way bigger than JWST. The white paper went on to explain what else this telescope would need: it would need to provide reflected light spectroscopy of dozens of planets around nearby stars.

This is measuring, not the light from the star, but the reflected light of the star from the planet! As you can imagine, this is a tall order but the spectra from this light will tell us whether there is water there, in what form, whether there are any biosignatures that would signal plant life and what the compounds in the atmosphere of the planet would be. A 12-meter telescope will be large to enough to enable direct imaging of planets in solar systems like our own.

It would need some mechanism to block out the light from the star, like a coronagraph or a starshade to get higher contrast observations. Using such a system, Hammel et al, estimates that for the likely fraction of earth-like planets in a habitable zone, say n sub earth to be between 0.05 and 0.2, the Sagan Observatory would have the capability to characterize dozens of earth-like planets. Here's a simulated image of what the 12 meter optical component of the Sagan Observatory would see around a nearby G star.

If this were our solar system the Sagan could see Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. Along with, and this is important, the spectra of the reflected light from the planets themselves. Here is an example of the resolution improvement of a 12-meter class system compared to Hubble. From this image you can see the limitations of a 2.4 meter telescope and why all future scopes are so big. What matters now is providing observations that answer some of the most pressing questions in astronomy, is resolution.

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Note: this is just a white paper/proposal, not a funded/planned program. Toying with the idea in my head, I would think starship would be needed to launch such a vehicle/platform, if launched in one piece.

Hopefully this can mature into an actual plan/idea/program, and do so much faster than Webb did! 100th birthday of Sagan for a launch? Sure, why not.

I believe the Sagan telescope was proposed long before Starship. They should trash that design and start over with a larger scope that could fit in a super heavy faring.

But as much as I love pretty pictures, I would prefer that NASA align all it's manned and unmanned programs behind a single mission. The next rovers shouldn't be dropped on Mars, Io, Europa, or Titan via sky crane , they should be on the moon moving boulders and sifting and tumbling regolith to stockpile aggregate for the next series of rovers that will start building landing zones and roads.

Heck I dunno, but it makes sense to me to have at least 2 prongs for nasa; interplanetary and deep space exploration. Interplanetary would hopefully continue to evolve to manned trips, and I've read read/watched a few advocating for Venus as a first stop.

All I know is that for efficiency's sake, the sooner SLS ends the better, as it is a $$$ black hole for NASA's budget.