Comments by "Gabor Rajnai" (@gaborrajnai6213) on "The Space Race" channel.

  1. BTW the film what Soviets used to get pictures from the far side of the Moon was salvaged from American spyballons flying over the Soviet Union. they found it good quality.
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  2.  @Phase52012  Since it doesnt need to be instantly pushed, ion thrusters would do the job perfectly fine. In a few years time it would be on a higher orbit with minimal fuel used.
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  3. Lol Musk got hurt when the Danish astronaut called him an idot in their debate about the crew currently in the ISS, and started shtposting out of anger, thats the widearcing explanation...
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  4. Well, Ameicans have the Vandenberg space base, where they arent really documenting what they are launching up so... that a military power runs an entirely public spaceprogram is a little bit naive.
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  5. The thing why they cant do that is combustion instability. With increasing rocket engines it becomes extremely hard to maintain perfect combustion in the ignition chamber because the fuel and oxidizer does not mix well in a large chamber. If there are incombusted fuel which detonates outside of the combustion chamber that naturally diminishes the performance of the engine but also damages the engine. They actually never figured it out in an official manner how to tackle the problem, every single F1 engine was handcrafted with trial and error of where the sweet spot of the fuel dispensers are, where they could achieve perfect combustion.
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  6. Soviets dragged their feet on the N1, because there was literally no usecase for it except going to the Moon, and they didnt like the pricetag for the rocket for that stunt alone. It was different to propose a space program on a converted ICBM, which was useful to them otherwise, and to propose to spend a crpton of money on a rocket which they only can use for publicity stunts. Soviet rocket engineers had to be somewhat of snake oil salesmen to convince the leadership to get funding for their ideas from the getgo, they always had to find a military necessity for their projects and adverize it as a solution, to sometimes nonexistent needs. For example Chelomei marketed the proton booster as the only rocket which can lift the tzar, which he knew is an insane idea to begin with, but he wanted a heavy lifter for the space program and he knew thats the only way he will get the money. The other reason was that Glushko, the engine designer was really into hypergolic fuels back at the day, because for those he could build bigger engines, while Korolev wanted a kerosene rocket, because he was afraid about what happens with such a big hypergolic rocket. The third reason was that Khruschev was ousted, and his successor wasnt that interested into the space race/ a lot of the rocket engineers were made into Khruschevs inner circle to push their agenda, so they became a little bit less favored later.
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  7. Well, the main drawback what the Soviets faced back in the time, and even Elon Musk faces today is combustion instability, so with rockets with big ignition chambers like the F1 its impossible to engineer such a geometry that the fuel and the oxidizer mixes totally, which leads to fuel and oxidizer in the outtake, which in turn will damage the engine in flight. The solution for NASA was literally trial and error, they put every single F1 into testpads, and tinkered with the injectors up until the point where combustion instability disappeared, but that made the F1 literally handcrafted, not massproduced, and incredibly expensive. On the other hand with hypergolics they didnt have such problems, they could have a combustion chamber pretty much as they wanted and the fuel still ignited perfectly all by itself. However hypergolic fuel is highly corrosive, to the point that its even questionable it wouldnt have eaten the rocket on a few days journey.
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  8. Ok, but Redstone wasnt an ICBM. It didnt have the range. Atlas was the first American ICBM, and R7 was in service for 2 years when it came.
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  9. Here comes the bad news. Theres no rocket with the lifting ability to build another ISS in the American arsenal. The Shuttle is retired, the Falcon heavy is nowhere close to its payload capacity. If Musk deorbits the ISS, then there wont be a spacestation for at least the time when that Starship thing will be working. Correction, the SLS could do it, but with its 1 billion launchcost per unit, a single module would cost the entire annual operating cost of the ISS.
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  10.  @shawncooper8131  What if it will never work? Would you pass the firstplace to the Chinese? They have theirone up.
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  11. Did they? I dont think they did. ISS is pure Russian technology, meanwhile we use nothing from Apollo...
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  12. In reality Musk wanted to pricegauge Biden, asking a horrendous sum for a "rescue mission", which Biden turned down, and Musk got offended, that he couldnt rip off the government with 200 million dollars, and the reshuffled the crew into a later flight which was already contracted for 80 million dollars (which 80 million is by some strange coincidence the exact price what the Russians ask for a Soyuz flight after sanctions, before sanctions they asked only 40 million. Falcon is cheaper in reusability isnt it).
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  13. I think there are some NASA engineers, who talked about these problems. I mean he said the Starship lunar lander doesnt makes sense at all, pretty much because of what you described pluss the fact that it is way overweight for the task, and why should you take this bulky crap to the Moon, when a smaller one would use less fuel. Giving the contract to Space Jesus was office politics from NASA, if he gets it good, if he doesnt, then his agressive cultists wont attack them. Besides the obvious fact that the woman who gave SpaceX the contract, quit her job in NASA and works for SpaceX since.
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  14. Dont worry, the Chinese will figure it out, then it will be existential for the US as well.
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  15. Yeah, the Americans... The guys who forgot the existence of Venus, because Soviets landed there, and they are handling science as 10 years olds their toycar races...
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  16. Nope resonant orbits unfrotunately dont work thatway. I mean Earth is moving Mars is moving so to have an orbit, which intersects both of them at the same time is extremely rare, like once in 10 years otherwise its entirely possible that when the cycler pass Earth proximity the Mars is in the other side of the solar system, when it crosses its orbit. Well unless the station constantly adjust its orbit and actively try to catch one of the planets.
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  17. It doesnt push against vacuum. Lets say you bring a handful of coins in your hand and put an iceskate into your feet so that friction is minimized. Now if you drop the pennies into one direction then you will be pushed into the opposite direction, because every force you apply generates an equal amount of counterforce. Rocket engines are dropping fuel very fast, so they produce a lot of counterforce.
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  18. And their rocket engineers were simply better than von Braun.
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  19. Well, no you get it wrong. The taxi vehicle would actually have to match up the orbit of the cycler to dock perfectly, theres no way to dock with a huge deltav between them no matter how close the cycler passes Earth. So it would be actually less fuel efficient to travel with a cycler, than a direct transfer orbit to Mars, since an Earth Mars resonant orbit has bigger apogee than a direct transfer orbit. That said, they cycler can be huge, which means its more comfortable, more secure for the crew, it can have its own greenhouse, so produce its food and oxygen which the taxi vechicle would lack, so dr Aldrin is into something with it, just that it wouldnt save him too much fuel.
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  20. Ok but which Musk rover will search for the secret nazi Moonbase?
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