Comments by "Archangel17" (@MDP1702) on "Scott Manley" channel.

@CarFreeSegnitz I don't think drone ship landings are even considered for the heavy booster, it is just too hugh. and it doesn't fit in their fast re-use idea. In essence the lower cargo is made up by fast re-use and cheap flights. The only possibility is a launch platform that is also used to land out on sea, but that would be so big it wouldn't have nearly any impact from waves.
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@ChaineYTXF The problem is I believe partially the structure of many seperate nations working together instead of one entity (like for example the EU). Also for some reason there just isn't much talked about this in Europe. I think if you'd tell most Europeans about the Ariane, most will be surprisedthere is a European rocket and such a high quality space entity.
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@markhull1366 That is politics for you, even if NASA wanted to go for something like SpaceX reusability goal 10 years ago (which was unlikely seeing their experience with the shuttle and that it would be around 5 years later for the first rocket booster landing for reuse), congress wouldn't have allowed it, SLS came about as a compromise: jobs remained for congressmembers and NASA got to go for people on the moon and the mosst powerfull rocket in history, at least that was how it looked at the time. Cost obviously spiraled out of control as did the timeline, though it was always planned to have a long lifetime, and to be honest, SpaceX is an exception to the rule, most spacecrafts take several years to a decade to get from initial development stage to actual flight. And SLS is a clear example for why just reusing parts of an old design isn't necessarily the best choice. NASA with the politics expecially suffers from inflexibility and outlook (NASA couldn't show 'failures' as easy as spaceX or other private companies can). I do hope the SLS will fly once or twice, afterall there is already so much money sunk into it, however it always depends on how much MORE it will cost from this point onwards. Obviously from NASA's 2010-2011 perspective a brand new expendable modern rocket design and parts would have been much better eitherway, but again politics. And they'd never reach SpaceX development capabilities, SpaceX is just so extraordinary in space development. In retrospect, NASA just shouldn't have gone for another rocket itself, but at the time, this was definitely not clear yet. I'd say only around 2018-2020 was this really starting to be obvious.
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@Everyday Martian except, these are escape vehicles, thus only used when in need. When you actually need this, I doubt that recovery costs or effort will be a problem. If the pods are cheaper, it is way better to use that.
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@markhull1366 I heard that the costs and energy/time needed to refurbish the rs-25's is essentially so high it is not really worth doing it and it might even be more interesting to just build new expendable design engines. This seems to be the deal with the space shuttle in general, reusable yes, but actually very expensive and with possibly lower flight frequency then if they had used a fully expendable rocket. However the reusability of Falcon 9/starship is a completely different beast.
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@kentonian The distances we are talking about are not bridged in 2 hours, if you land the booster that close you could as well land it on the pad.
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I'd argue that a rotating spacestation could really increase scientific discoveries in space. With 1g environments scientists can go to space for much longer without actually needing a lot of training or care. They would be able to live in a 1g environment, but conduct their experiments in 0 or low g environments. This would definitely be interesting once passenger flights to orbit becomes a lot cheaper.
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@wabalaka1565 They definitely are going to need a heat shield. SN8 had already a few panels on it, sn9 has more. However they are going to use more standardised panels (the ship doesn't have a very difficult shape, like the space shuttle) and are going to eventually just use robots to add/replace panels. In other words, they want to avoid the spaceshuttles mistakes and make it an efficient and easy to place/replace heat shield. And ofcourse due to the steel and cooling methods, the heatshield tiles don't have to be as strong as the space shuttles.
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@pekabu01 Or build a spacestation with 1/3rd g. Honestly they should have built this years ago to test out long term effects of low g environments.
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@boostav I am certain that there are indeed barges that could handle a mass like that, though landing mass that is 72m high? that is a completely different story and I doubt you'll find it to be practical. The falcon 9 has a dry mass nearly 7 times lower and is 1,5 times smaller (in height, not even considering the 3x width increase. There never was talk of the super heavy booster using a barge to land, something like an oil rig, yes. and while there certainly would be ships it can land on, you need to take into account the cost of that vessel. If it is more expensive than just having a slightly lower payload (which is likely the case seeing the $/kg target) it isn't usefull at all, especially with the amount of launches they want to be able to do.
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@AndreInfanteInc 100m is likely the lowest you would want to go for a rotating station.100m rings/stations would likely be completely closed off like in submarines/regular spacestations. You shouldn't even be seeing the other side of the ring with such a small diameter, just hallways and rooms. Ringworlds usually are measured more in (many) km's for a reason. In essence the scale was just too small to start with. I can understand it from a specs perspective, but that limitation is essentially what caused the game to be uncomfortable/not possible.
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Gmail X You are joking, right?
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I know it is not the engines this time, but could the third engine be used as an emergency reserve engine during landing if one (or both) of the other engines fail?
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That is why you don't land on a slanted surface.
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You won't use windows unless at observation platform or such. There really isn't a need for windows other than a nice view and this is likely only if you look at earth or so. And like RommDan said, they are unnecessary structural weaknesses.
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@jackboot3946 For an abservation platform, windows will do fine, that won't be that great of a problem. For the rest, yes you can use camera's.
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SpaceX seems the be the exception, BO overall the rule (at least for larger rocket companies). It could just be that BO is taking time with New Glenn to make it more easy to scale up to New Armstrong afterwards, though this might just be what I personally hope.
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@imconsequetau5275 How do you get to 4x the stability with that setup? It seems to me this would bring in many new problems, while not solving most of the old ones.
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@boostav But these aren't used to land a massive booster on it. Anyway, it is clear barge landings aren't in SpaceX's super heavy plans.
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@-danR it costs 50 million per seat for crew dragon, how they are well set to go into space tourism with that is beyond me, even if this means people spend more than a couple of minutes in zero gravity. If SpaceX wants to get into space tourism they'll need either starship or much cheaper falcon 9 flights. And at this moment we have no idea how much a New Glenn launch will cost. But space tourism isn't BO's goal, lunar operations and space stations in general are (with Bezos being a proponent of something like an o'neill cylinder rather than mars). SpaceX goal is mars, BO is lunar and spacestations. Ofcourse SpaceX might possibly end up in BO's waters, however they'll need the free capacity for that and their mars goal will probably require most if of their capacity for a long time. And again in the end we don't know what BO's capacities and costs will be by 2025 or the end of this decade. For all we know they'll get a lock on lunar activities due to for example their fuel choice, ... BO goes slowly, but I wouldn't underestimate them either in the long run. Eventually there will be a point that SpaceX can't "easily" improve things, if BO comes only a few years later, that might not matter if they are eventually just as good/better at what they need to do.
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@hellothere_1257 In star wars they have something like a highly efficient anti-gravity generator, which means they basically can ignore orbital mechanics almost all the time.
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@AndreInfanteInc Well, if you go smaller, you are making a station without a horizon, this could be much easier to handle.
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@cedriceric9730 What are you talking about? Only test prototypes have been build, obviously they used smaller conventional explosives for testing. Nukes are absolutely necessary for Orion.
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@tack9571 BO existed before SpaceX, calling them a wannabe SpaceX is so wrong on every level.
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@ImieNazwiskoOK I don't think they actually received a lot of funding from NASA (and please don't mention manned lunar landing module, since that isn't just BO).
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@bradleytaniguchi1187 I don't think the booster will prove any meaningfull problems. It is rather similar as to what starship did now in ascend and rockets always have done, just with more engines and bigger. Furthermore in terms of flight it will be similar to falcon 9's that return to the launchpad. Re-orbit will prove probably the next big milestone to tackle, since this test only seemed to have failed due to too low pressure from the fuel header tank, I am sure that is fixed rather easily. Orbital refueling isn't really a problem I'd guess. Even without it, it would already be a crazy launch vehicle. But even if their idea of refuelling fails, there are probably others, like pushing the fuel out to the other vessel with something inflatable or maybe a piston of some kind. If push comes to shove something like a rotation station could be used, the refuellers on the inside and receiver docked to the outside. Just to say, if one thing fails, there will be other options left over to try out.
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@paullangford8179 still I'd think having the 3rd engine ready to start up in case one or both of the other engines go out due to a problem with the engine and not the fuel flow, is logical.
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