I knew RTGs would be brought up.

Do you realize how small the percentage of the population that has any clue what an RTG is actually is?

I'm playing the devils advocate here.... even as unknown as RTGs are, there's still a lot of pearl clutching around them...an actual reactor of any scale would make their heads explode.

I personally do not oppose the launch....I'm bringing up the regulatory and pr nightmare it will face

I think nasa does a pretty good job of hiding these things in plain sight. I am old enough to remember people *****ing about voyager launches and how nasa had to say things like "we launch over water to the East just in case" to quell the anti nuke groups in the 70s. If the Green's were to make a big stink today it may very well get some traction.

RTGs?

HA!

I give you the nuclear powered jet engine for a bomber



https://texags.com/forums/34/topics/2318527

I've seen that thing before... lawd!

Mathguy I agree, they do a great job of keeping it low key for the most part. People are generally dumb, the pr game is the biggest thing!

What is there to test? I didn't think anything was out of stacking?

Mathguy64 said:

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What is there to test? I didn't think anything was out of stacking?

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I'm guessing a tank to test new steel but I dunno.

It's also possible that SN15 is put on the pad later this week and maybe gets static fired but that would be really optimistic I think.

I think they'll be moving some new steel tanks down to the tank farm.

That was a crazy-go-nuts idea. The fallout from the exhaust would have been a bigger problem than the payload, especially departing from or coming back to a friendly base.

Launch coming up today for F9. (Teslarati):

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SpaceX is scheduled to attempt its tenth orbital launch of 2021 also Falcon 9's two-dozenth dedicated Starlink mission as early as 12:34 pm EDT (UTC-4) on Wednesday, April 7th.

Known as Starlink-23 SpaceX's 23rd dedicated launch of operational Starlink satellites and 24th operational launch overall will also mark the first time a Falcon 9 rocket lifts off under daylight since January 24th a welcome reprieve after half a dozen late-night or early-morning Starlink launches. SpaceX will offer an official webcast of the launch as usual, with coverage beginning around 12:20 pm at the links below.

Beneath Starlink-23's flight-proven fairing and expendable second stage, SpaceX has assigned Falcon 9 booster B1058 to the launch. Barring delays, the historic rocket famous for debuting in May 2020 on SpaceX's inaugural 'Demo-2' astronaut launch will narrowly miss beating SpaceX's Falcon booster turnaround record (27d 4h) by a little over four hours. In other words, Starlink-23 will mark the second time in spaceflight history that a rocket booster has flown twice in less than four weeks and achieve that feat just two months after Falcon 9 B1060 became the first to do so.

Beyond individual feats of rocket reuse, Starlink-23 will also be SpaceX's 10th orbital launch in three months just 95 days into the new year. On average, that means that the company and its Falcon rockets are on track to complete nearly 40 orbital launches (~39) in 2021 shy of CEO Elon Musk's ambitious 48-launch target but still a major achievement if SpaceX can sustain its first-quarter cadence.

After Starlink-23, SpaceX is expected to enter a rare two-week stand-down as it turns its focus to Crew-2, Crew Dragon's second operational astronaut launch. That mission is scheduled to launch no earlier than (NET) April 22nd.

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18 minutes or so.

This caught my eye yesterday

https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2021/04/starship-sn15-rollout-raptor-testing/

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A huge amount of work is continuing at the Orbital Launch Site, ranging from the addition of GSE (Ground Support Equipment) and commodity tanks through to the initial phase of constructing the Integration Tower that will become the tallest structure in the region when completed.

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The tallest structure on SPI is Sapphire Condominiums which checks in at 403 feet.

It's gonna be pretty incredible. It will also take...like a lot (valley girl voice) of Methelox to fuel SH and starship for launches. "Catching" a SH (still prefer BFR) mid-air is not going to be simple/work the first time.

Starlink 23 launch looked good.

That landing view of the F9 first stage was awesome! Glad they got the onboard cameras working on time for that.

That's the second coolest landing view they've done. Tops is going to be double simultaneous landing of the side boosters for Falcon Heavy for quite awhile, but the onboard was pretty unique.

No doubt. Hard to beat the land/near shore landings. It just seems like so many of the offshore drone ship landings for the last several months (at least that I've seen - haven't watched them all) have been at night and/or the cameras cut out and poof there's the booster once it cuts back on.

I loved that booster perspective, was a great reminder just how unlikely it is to be able to do that over and over again.

That looks looks something I made in the 7th grade by cramming 20 Estes A10-3T engines into a tube, glued fins on, stuck a nose cone on, crammed 20 igniters in and then hit the red button.

FYI, The cutout on the way offshore landings is due to vibration breaking the satellite connection.

PJYoung said:

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Reminds me of this!

It will be interesting to see how well that many engines works. It looks a bit like the infamous Soviet N1 rocket.

Was just about to post the trust dome!

This inside ring of raptors will gimbal!

Mathguy64 said:

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That looks looks something I made in the 7th grade by cramming 20 Estes A10-3T engines into a tube, glued fins on, stuck a nose cone on, crammed 20 igniters in and then hit the red button.

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How many man hours of welding did you do?...Look closely at that thing..



It's a work of art...

will25u said:

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PJYoung said:

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Reminds me of this!

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You might appreciate this one

Next one is off to the pad.

Meanwhile, in the for-profit part of the business;

SpaceX landed a rocket on a boat five years agoit changed everything

Cool article

Quote:

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After nearly a dozen failed attempts, subsequent landings soon filled a SpaceX hangar full of used rockets. This caught some SpaceX engineers off guard. "It even surprised us that we suddenly had ten first stages or something like that," Hans Koenigsmann, one of SpaceX's earliest hires, said a few years afterward. "And we were like, well, we didn't really account for that."

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This one should have the new more robust slimmed down Raptors.

Average time from roll out to launch has been hitting around 21 days with the last few but with the new raptors this might beat that by a few days.

(Assuming the FAA has blessed things)

PJYoung said:

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This one should have the new more robust slimmed down Raptors.

Average time from roll out to launch has been hitting around 21 days with the last few but with the new raptors this might beat that by a few days.

(Assuming the FAA has blessed things)

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Why did we have to wait for SN15 for the new slimmed down Raptors. They're pretty much bolt-ons right?

Redesigned thrust puck for them?

It's frustrating, but we don't know what they've been changing in the production sequence really. Clearly, it's based on flight experiences as well as test stands (they're fired up in McGregor), but the actual data SpaceX is understandably secretive about (this is a groundbreaking engine and the CCP is listening, obviously).

I liken it to the Pratt and Whitney geared turbofan (PW1000) product manager; the technology is public knowledge but the secret is in the sauce/integration/ratios etc. that they have data to.

Hopefully the mountain of data they have now on relights in flight/iterative changes make it much more reliable moving forward. We don't even know why the bell housing color/materiel changed, for goodness sakes.

The common thought is that the newer generation raptors wouldn't work with SN8-11