- Aug 28, 2014
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Not gonna link anything. Just kinda freeballin' it here so take it with a grain of sand.
NASA: Got two things going on:
The crewed capsule program: This has been farmed out to Boeing and Space Ex. This gets crew to the space station so that we don't have to rely on the Ruskies. Capsule rides aboard a reliable rocket so the issue is just the capsule. Both were supposed to fly by now. Boeing's tests keep failing and there's been a tug of war. NASA want's them to fly another test. Boeing wants to say "no, trust us". Elon Musk as been focusing on his Mars Ship and is behind schedule and has been pissing off NASA.
Interestingly we were to stop funding for the ISS in 2024. So we are spending a lot of money on a system that won't get a lot of use.
Artemis: The moon missions. NASA developing it's own capsule and it's own rocket system the SLS. I have to be honest the SLS is a huge cluster ****. Over schedule, over budget, cost plus contract. I don't know how congress won't scrap it and I won't blame them. It was doomed from the start. Because of the politics involved, it was required to use the same vendors that built the shuttle. So NASA from the beginning had their hands tied. NASA has to build shyt based on congressional districts that lobby the best. It's just a mess. 100's of billions have been thrown down this hole and is a perfect example of why government should do the least possible.
SpaceX:
Elon develops rockets the Russian way. Build it fast, let it blow up, build it again. So they've been blowing up a lot of shyt.
Elon has three things going on,
Starlink: This is 1000's of little satellites launched 60 at time like every two weeks. Gives you internet everywhere. Elon is banking on this to be his money maker and pay for Mars. It's been going well. I think they've launched something like 10 times this year. Seems to be going well. Anybody that has tried this has failed so it's left to be seen if it will actually work when he gets all the satellites up. But he's bet the company on it.
Crewed Capsule: Like I said above they're behind because of...
Starship: Elon's rocket to Mars. They keep blowing shyt up but he keeps going.He's developing a new rocket to get it out of earth's gravity well. That rocket , at one time called the BFR, is methane powered and they've successfully developed the engines. Starship itself will be able to do self propelled landing and would be able to take off from low gravity like moon or Mars. The problem with landing on say the moon is that it kicks up a lot of dust that just circles the planet so they may have to build a landing pad. So why not use this for Artemis? Well, right now it can't dock with NASA's Gateway platform which is the station that will circle the moon and act as a rest station to and from the moon. Plus you got the landing pad problem. I don't know where this thing is going. There are so many issues and unknowns when it comes to a trip to Mars mostly that it will kill any Astronauts that go. But it would be a great platform for the moon. Logically, I thing Elon should concentrate on being able to deliver payload reliable to the moon while they figure out how to keep people alive on the way to Mars.
We spoke in chat a little bit about the problems of leaving the Van Allen belt. We've only got like 30 days of experience out there and all those astronauts had health problems. It's a big problem. And, there's no money to be made on Mars. I'd like to see a focus on robotics to carry out those missions. But the moon. The moon can be mined, it has riches like Helium3 which would be game changer for future rocket propulsion.
That's my 2 cents.
NASA: Got two things going on:
The crewed capsule program: This has been farmed out to Boeing and Space Ex. This gets crew to the space station so that we don't have to rely on the Ruskies. Capsule rides aboard a reliable rocket so the issue is just the capsule. Both were supposed to fly by now. Boeing's tests keep failing and there's been a tug of war. NASA want's them to fly another test. Boeing wants to say "no, trust us". Elon Musk as been focusing on his Mars Ship and is behind schedule and has been pissing off NASA.
Interestingly we were to stop funding for the ISS in 2024. So we are spending a lot of money on a system that won't get a lot of use.
Artemis: The moon missions. NASA developing it's own capsule and it's own rocket system the SLS. I have to be honest the SLS is a huge cluster ****. Over schedule, over budget, cost plus contract. I don't know how congress won't scrap it and I won't blame them. It was doomed from the start. Because of the politics involved, it was required to use the same vendors that built the shuttle. So NASA from the beginning had their hands tied. NASA has to build shyt based on congressional districts that lobby the best. It's just a mess. 100's of billions have been thrown down this hole and is a perfect example of why government should do the least possible.
SpaceX:
Elon develops rockets the Russian way. Build it fast, let it blow up, build it again. So they've been blowing up a lot of shyt.
Elon has three things going on,
Starlink: This is 1000's of little satellites launched 60 at time like every two weeks. Gives you internet everywhere. Elon is banking on this to be his money maker and pay for Mars. It's been going well. I think they've launched something like 10 times this year. Seems to be going well. Anybody that has tried this has failed so it's left to be seen if it will actually work when he gets all the satellites up. But he's bet the company on it.
Crewed Capsule: Like I said above they're behind because of...
Starship: Elon's rocket to Mars. They keep blowing shyt up but he keeps going.He's developing a new rocket to get it out of earth's gravity well. That rocket , at one time called the BFR, is methane powered and they've successfully developed the engines. Starship itself will be able to do self propelled landing and would be able to take off from low gravity like moon or Mars. The problem with landing on say the moon is that it kicks up a lot of dust that just circles the planet so they may have to build a landing pad. So why not use this for Artemis? Well, right now it can't dock with NASA's Gateway platform which is the station that will circle the moon and act as a rest station to and from the moon. Plus you got the landing pad problem. I don't know where this thing is going. There are so many issues and unknowns when it comes to a trip to Mars mostly that it will kill any Astronauts that go. But it would be a great platform for the moon. Logically, I thing Elon should concentrate on being able to deliver payload reliable to the moon while they figure out how to keep people alive on the way to Mars.
We spoke in chat a little bit about the problems of leaving the Van Allen belt. We've only got like 30 days of experience out there and all those astronauts had health problems. It's a big problem. And, there's no money to be made on Mars. I'd like to see a focus on robotics to carry out those missions. But the moon. The moon can be mined, it has riches like Helium3 which would be game changer for future rocket propulsion.
That's my 2 cents.
