Posts by Flocke Kroes

Re: Probably just as well

Spy satellites used to return film to Earth that was slowed by a parachute and caught by a helicopter. Electron rockets are heavier than a film capsule (but far lighter than a Saturn V booster). One was caught but dropped because it was swinging beyond the safe range. Perhaps with practice Electrons could be recovered by helicopter but early failures gave Rocket Lab experience of what gets damaged by a dunk in the ocean. They have reused components already and modified the first stage to better withstand sea water. Apparently those modifications and a boat are cheaper than a helicopter - especially if you have a boat in place anyway for if the catch fails.

Catching (part of) a larger rocket with a helicopter might still happen. ULA published their smart reuse plan years ago. At the time everyone thought it was about as likely as catching a Saturn V. Later, ULA got a contract for 38 Kuiper launches with Vulcan. Back then Blue Origin had not delivered any BE-4 engines to ULA and each Vulcan requires 2. Last I heard, BO might be able to deliver 2 engines per quarter. That would be over 9 years just for Kuiper and ULA has other customers. Blue Origin want to put 7 BE-4 engines on their reusable New Glenn rocket. I am sure there is a promise to increase the rate of production but the obvious shortage of engines caused ULA to dust off there smart reuse power point and see if the numbers add up. If this happens at all, it will be years away. Very unlikely, probably not worth the R&D money but not technically insane.

Board members can do things

What board members can and should do is a mix of the country's laws and the company's articles of association. They are elected by the shareholders so in theory they are the people that shareholders believe will give return them the highest dividends while maintaining the value of the stock. In practice large numbers of small investors organise badly and risk getting ripped off by a small number of large investors. When there is are large amount of money involved, board members may work very hard at making sure the in group get a fatter proportion of the money than the out group.

Re: Uncontrolled reentry?

The preferred target is the Spacecraft Cemetery but if this is a solid rocket stage then there wasn't much choice about where it came down. (That's not my department...)

Re: Not convinced

I have heard about adverts for Starlink. Tesla has changed its no advertising policy and started adverting... on Twitter.

How many Twitter users need to buy a tunnel or a new brain?

Re: Source of legal advice

Getting legal advice for the police is only a small step up from listening to some random fool on the internet. The law could have been written with restrictions but it wasn't so of course it was used for more than was 'promised'. Please get your advice from a proper lawyer.

I would also like to ask people to not vote for parties that give us open ended laws but the OMRLP does not stand in every constituency and if they ever got into power I am sure they would quickly become just like the others.

Re: Why No In-Orbit Satellite Techs?

ISS is about 400km up. Viasat3 is in geostationary orbit: 35,000km up. Falcon 9 + Crew dragon can go to ISS and back for about $220M. Falcon 9 cannot get a crew dragon to Viasat3. A Falcon Heavy might be powerful enough to get a crew dragon to geostationary - probably for around $300M but with a list of caveats: The radio is not intended to work at such distances. There would be two trips through the Van Allen radiation belts. Dragon's heat shield was originally designed for return from the Moon but the spec was trimmed down and is now only good for a few returns from the ISS - with maintenance. It is not clear if the heat shield is still good enough for one return from geostationary orbit. The only vehicle that is vaguely operational for such a mission is SLS: $4B per launch, can only launch once every two years and all launches are booked for the foreseeable future.

When Starship is working it would be an option in theory. Current pricing competitive with existing rockets. The plan is to get the incremental cost of a launch below $10M but it will be a long time before customers see prices approaching that cost. 100t-200t to LEO is well above anything else currently available but payload to Geostationary Transfer Orbit (half way to geostationary orbit) will be crap (~15t). One day starship will be capable of delivering propellant to another Starship. That might take 3 or 4 extra launches but a fully fuelled starship in low Earth orbit can take a full payload anywhere. Even further into the future, Starship's heat shield is intended to be good enough to return from Mars and reliability good enough to land humans on Earth. Many years from now sending humans to geostationary orbit and getting them back will be possible but not a sensible choice for repairing satellites.

Current satellite design is made extra difficult because the satellite must fold up small enough to fit in existing rockets and every kilogram must be shaved off the mass to get under the performance limits of current rockets. Those two requirements increase price and decrease reliability. With an operational Starship, the satellite does not have to fold up so small and solutions can be brute forced with extra mass to increase reliability and reduce cost. You could send several cheap reliable large heavy satellites for the cost of one current small light and expensive satellite. If one did not work then there would be no need to send humans because there would be about two spares already in place.

Re: Cause of delays

There was a large amount of impatience with the FAA doing a thorough job of the PEA with limited resources. It was completed in June 2022 and there has been no credible legal challenge to the result. You can be certain that if any 't' was dotted or a single 'i' crossed Jeff would have litigated delays to the project until after New Glenn makes a profit. The first Starship orbital launch attempt was April 2023. The FAA did not slow the PEA and the PEA was not the pacing item. The longest delay was building and testing all the ground support equipment.

Re: Meanwhile at Twitter

She is not that stupid. She has probably asked her own lawyer "What is the minimum I have to do to avoid any personal consequences?" and "is the company's indemnity cover for executives rock solid?"

She knew damn well that is job meant standing on the edge of a glass cliff and that Elon would be right behind her. There is no need to jump before she is pushed.

The Register's link to a link is more about solid rocket propellants

This article linked to a previous Register article that linked to a study for total emissions of all space flights. At the time, yearly emissions from all rockets was equivalent to 650 Australians (because it was a New Zealand study). The study referenced aluminium and chlorine compounds that are completely irrelevant to Starship. In theory they would be a concern for SLS solid rocket boosters but SLS will launch at most once every two years. There are a large number of small rockets that use solid propellants but they are small with a limited number of launches because for the vast majority of payloads it is cheaper to ride share on a Falcon 9.

There was a bit that is relevant to Starship. Methalox rocket exhaust has not been studied at high altitude. The Programmatic Environmental Assessment went into great detail on Raptor exhaust at sea level: mostly steam and CO2, a small amount of unburned propellants and some partially burned intermediates. The most obvious thing for those intermediates and unburned propellant to do is burn to completion further along the big flame shooting out the back of the rocket. According to Musk's dreams, Starships will be flying point to point across the Earth at a scale to compete with first class long distance air travel. Perhaps one day it will be worth comparing Starship to a small fraction of the airline industry.

With that in mind, the Register may have to come up with a new unit of FUD on a similar scale to a micro Ballmer. If rocket pollution is an issue that concerns anyone, try a very accessible site that gives a clear idea of the relative numbers involved.

Currently a bunch of "environmental" lawsuits are seeking funding. This involves organisations with a wildlife based name paying a minimal amount for a lawyer to take the FAA to court. The lawyer does the bare minimum to avoid sanction from the courts or the Bar association. The court case fails promptly for noddy level errors: wrong venue, plaintiff lacks standing, plaintiff names wrong defendant, plaintiff has not exhausted non-litigation base options, plaintiff fails to identify anything the defended has done wrong, plaintiff has not asked a remedy the court can impose... The case gets thrown out promptly but in the mean time, there is news, publicity and fund raising. Later there are allegations of conspiracy and corruption leading more publicity and fund raising. If that was not bad enough, publicity litigation draws funding away for charities that are doing something constructive for the environment.

Even when the result looks clear in advance, litigation can end with a surprise. When Musk threw his "but the 'bots" tantrum the very predictable result was that he would have to abide by the contract he signed. That would mean $44B divided between the shareholders and Musk would get among other things Twitter's bank accounts - less the legal fees. In that situation a good strategy for getting a purchaser to pay up would be to hire lawyers from the list of firms world famous for their exorbitant prices. WLRK were doing precisely as instructed by their client: giving Musk every possible reason to capitulate in full without delay, so I do not fault them for their prices in this case. Perhaps there is a reason to take issue with the sort of client WLRK accept (I havn't looked). This time they were simply getting Musk to honour a commitment he had made with enthusiasm and without listening to anyone trying to advise him of the consequences.

Mark Zuckerberg is not exactly flavour of the month in any other context but Elon has worked really hard to become even less popular. I am not referring to hard work put in by others with a financial incentive for Musk to fail. Musk has made a clear effort to express his character in his tweets and by his own actions - or lack thereof when it comes to paying bills and former employees.

cheers of Musk employees as they watched Starship break up in flight.

It makes sense if you understand the enormous differences between SpaceX and old space.

An old space rocket is designed and simulated for years at enormous expense. Eventually they try to build one and find they can't. They either have to do expensive research into new manufacturing methods or repeat the expensive design and simulation stage. The project gets delayed for years and the costs rocket up. When they finally do launch the rocket gets to orbit but only after many cancellations and delays because the cost of failure would be the end of a cost plus contract. The final product has an incremental cost of $4B per launch and they can only make one every two years.

SpaceX's immediate goal is not a rocket but a rocket factory. Last I looked there are three boosters and three ships parked in the rocket garden plus more at the test site and more nearing completion at the factory. The factory can turn out a complete stack every month now and is undergoing a huge expansion. The license for Boca Chica is currently 5 orbital launch attempt + some suborbital launches per year. Blowing up a rocket in the cleared launch corridor really means nothing to SpaceX - except perhaps they will not have to scrap another rocket to make space in the garden.

For that particular launch, the thrust vectoring system was destroyed well before stage separation was scheduled. They needed the entire thing in pieces before it left the cleared launch corridor. The flight termination system was triggered and the shaped charges exploded promptly but the rocket did not blow up. Luckily it was doing summersaults so the thrust averaged out to zero. It took about 40 seconds for the rocket to RUD. I bet there was relief when it happened because no-one wanted a fully fuelled upper stage to explode outside the launch corridor.

The test generated a huge amount of data - one test is worth a thousand simulations. Simulations showed the upgraded base of the launch table was strong enough for one launch. That proved spectactularly wrong. The simulations have been improved and a large crater was dug (by rocket engines) and filled with rebar and concrete supported by pilings and covered in a giant upside down shower head. Although some of the pieces of the pad production system were built before the test it is clear that waiting for installation would have created at least three months of delay. SpaceX now have a similar amount of delay but with test data informing a thousand changes to the rocket plus better simulations to guide the design of the flame diverter.

With the pad unavailable because of construction work SpaceX has taken the opportunity to make huge changes to the layout of the ground support equipment. Most of the big vertical tanks have gone - the water tanks are now on their side and vacuum insulated tanks have arrived and been installed for LOX + methane. Testing has continued at the former Massey's gun range site. There have been structural tests on the nose cone, cryo-proofing of a ship, a static test fire and a test of the flight termination system.

I am sure all the SpaceX staff had hoped for more from that launch but in context it is clear to everyone but Jim Free that there has been no significant interruption to Starship progress. If the new flame diverter does its job then SpaceX might be able to fit in all 5 possible launch attempts this year. (My bet is on 4)

Re: All of our eggs are going into one basket.

Most customers were used to the reality that they might have to wait a few months for a launch. Launching every three days is a very modern concept - although there was a time when new spy satellites were needed regularly because they ran out of film. Right now, crew dragon can only launch from Pad 39A. A crew access tower is under construction at LC-40. If a Falcon 9 blows up either one of those then NASA would freak out at the thought of launching from the other one before an investigation was completed.

The most obvious customer that would be biting the furniture and wanting to launch immediately is SpaceX/Starlink. If a repeat explosion would not be a risk to people or launch facilities then SpaceX would ask for and might even get a launch license while an investigation was in progress. If the DoD really needed a rocket they could probably buy an Atlas V from Amazon (Amazon bought a bunch of them for Kuiper).

Multiple new baskets are being weaved. Some may be operational next year.

Re: Just answer 'Fish'

Rule 34 strikes again: NSFW.

Thanks to misreading your post ...

... I just realised why the rate limits got increased several times in a row:

Elon kept getting locked out because the servers mistook him for a robot scraping Twitter.

Now for the really difficult decision

For the companies currently damaging their reputation with AI, would it be an improvement if management were replaced with an AI?

Re: Bets

As Musk's lawyers are so fond of saying, no reasonable person would consider Musk's tweets a source of factual information.

The launch industry is already disrupted. Launches used to be affordable. ULA would look at your budget and expenses and decide what you could afford. Ariane V, Atlas V and Delta IV all lost their commercial launches to Falcon 9. The price of Soyuz got slashed hard even before Russia started stealing payloads. Sanctions limit who can launch from China and cadence limit launching from India. Ariane VI and Vulcan had no business case until it was clear New Glenn could not launch enough of Kuiper before the license expires. The bulk of the small launch market has been taken by ride shares on Falcon 9. These are not Musk Tweets, but statements and price lists from competitors.

Full reuse is going to take time, so the next cost reductions comes from different directions. The price of launch is already low compared to the cost of most payloads. The second disruption is in progress from bolt-ons to Starlink satellites (Starshield). Customers can already take advantage of the mass production costs of Starlink's power, propulsion, space communications and ground communications. Prices for Starship are already available: if it can launch on a Falcon 9 then that is the price and the customer can switch to Starship when it becomes available otherwise the price matches Falcon heavy. Starship provides about 10x the payload mass of Falcon 9. That hits one of the big costs of satellites: shaving every possible kilogram of the mass to fit within the limits of the launch vehicle. Initially only one customer is ready to take advantage of the extra payload mass: Starlink, but customers will be able to take advantage of that with bolt-ons.

According to early Musk tweets, the price of a Falcon 9 launch was going to be $27M. The actual price today is $67M. Some of that is inflation. The rest can be blamed on lack of competition. Reducing the launch price will not bring enough extra launches to SpaceX to increase profits. Again according to Musk, the incremental cost of Falcon 9 launches was $15M in 2020. More credible sources estimate $18M to $20M. SpaceX could drop their price to $27M (with or without adding inflation) and still make a profit.

Musk was good at pushing up share prices. Tesla has grown enormously because people bought shares at far above their possible value - and many people still do. I used to find Musk tweets grating but my expectations have dropped off a cliff since then. Musk's lawyers convinced me to get SpaceX facts from other sources long ago.

not a medical condition

I am sure it could be cured with arsenic tablets.

Dangers of speed reading before I had to dash out

You are quite right.

I can see the value in Red Hat getting a revenue stream in return for their excellent work. If a customer finds the relationship problematic they can take the source code elsewhere and under those circumstances loss of Red Hat support would not be an issue. The freedoms granted by the GPL are still effectively preserved, but by a thinner margin than I am used to.

I am concerned that as Red Hat have found this opportunity others will follow without contributing patches up stream. I see it as a weak part of the GPL. I hope it is not so weak that it can be embraced, extended and exploited.

One set of marketers are wary because potential customer data will be in the hands of a different set of marketers.

Confused...

Why didn't the system authenticate the tape played at double speed?