astroamateur.bsky.social
Just a dude who likes to take pictures of rockets and space.
80 posts
16 followers
103 following
Regular Contributor
Active Commenter
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Where can the public find these grants? I'd love to look through them. I don't doubt that they've received grants, but USAspending.gov shows 0 federal grants for Space Exploration Technologies Corp.
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You realize that the vast majority of money received from the govt is for contracts, right? SpaceX provides a service. They aren't just giving them free money. Even Starship contracts are fixed cost and milestone based. They are get paid when milestone are met. Everything else is out of pocket.
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Falcon 9 disagrees. Musk might be a shitty person but his company developed and operates the most successful US rocket in history. It is the gold standard that all rockets are compared to. A shit company doesn't do that.
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Viasat would be the only chance for that. All other Atlas V launches are either Kuiper or Starliner.
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Just shedding weight. Didn't need that nozzle anyway
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Yep. The X-37 missions either land at Vandenberg or Kennedy. I'd love to see k e at Kennedy but they're secretive missions. They don't typically announce where/when it'll land ahead of time.
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Canon 550d with a 500mm Opteka F/8 lens
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I don't know that they do. This launched from Kennedy in Florida. There's definitely places to watch Vandenberg launches from off-base but not sure if there's anything on it.
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(3/?) The gov't could easily raise taxes on the upper class, close tax loopholes, etc. to fund those other programs. Realistically, even if this contract and others like it were cancelled, it still wouldn't go towards those programs.
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(2/?) DOD satellites include GPS, weather monitoring, and communications. All of these (GPS especially) help life on earth. 7000 of those active sats are Starlink and, importantly, not all satellites do the same thing. GPS sats don't track weather, comm sats don't provide GPS, etc.
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(1/?) $5.6b is the max total spending for this contract thru 2029. The contract can include as many launches as $5.6b will afford. The $5m is a one time payment for each company. The $5.6b is shared between both companies. This is a minuscule ~0.08% of the US budget.
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Indefinite delivery/quantity just means that there aren't a set number of launches. For now, each company is basically paid a $5m retainer which will help them further develop their rockets
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They're launch providers. Rocket Lab is second to only SpaceX in number of US launches/year. Stoke Space is developing a fully reusable rocket. That contract allows the DOD to order launches from them until 2029. The total value of all of those launches between both companies maxes at $5.6billion
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FYI Space Force is not NASA. Doesnt take away from your point tho. It's totally normal to hand out contracts for vehicles that are not flying yet.
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The contracts handed out to SpaceX (and ULA/Blue Origin) were DOD contracts, not NASA. Unrelated to the NASA science budget.
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Needs more RGB
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Wind shear was the reason why Challenger exploded. The damaged O-Rings likely would've survived the burn, but the wind pulled the SRB segments apart at the joints resulting in the failure.
You could build a more resilient rocket, but again that makes it heavier. Easier to only fly in good conditions
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As for the wind, rockets travel through bands of winds going multiple directions. You can have a gust of wind pushing the top of the rocket east, another pushing the bottom west, and the force of that atmosphere pushing down on the rocket all at once. It can tear the rocket apart.
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Rockets can launch in the rain but the potential for being struck by lightning does. Apollo 12 was nearly aborted because of a lightning strike in-flight. You could probably lightning-harden a rocket but that would make it more expensive and heavier.
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Not really a great point bc SpaceX is currently the most dependable and cheapest launch provider. The whole 'funnel money into SpaceX' rhetoric only makes sense if they weren't already the best option for most jobs. ULA and Blue Origin also got massive govt contracts recently.
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So a whopping ~0.2% of NASA's budget? Even less if any of those payouts are spread across multiple years.
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Nothing beats the cool-factor of a space shuttle. Hopefully Dream Chaser brings that back
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I don't believe there's any set plans but I recall Peter Beck saying it's possible.
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Can't wait to see it!
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Awesome! How soon can you launch one after the other?
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NASAspaceflight no affiliation with NASA. While they mostly stream US launches, they do cover launches worldwide. If they're running your livestream, you're in good hands.
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Don Pettit never fails to deliver!
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As always, full sized images can be found on my website: astroamateur.space
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Anyway, thank you for coming to my Ted Talk. Theres definitely legit concerns for Starship but I think theyll overcome.
I dont think itll reach the original claims, but Starship will still be awesome, as will Neutron. Hopefully there's higher quality articles about both.
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There's also a claim that theyre landing in the ocean still to hide heat issues yet SpaceX wanted to attempt a Starship catch on IFT-8 if not for the IFT-7 failure. Just another baseless claim by the author.
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They call out the heatshield for Starship in the cost breakdown. If tiles cost the same as Shuttle (they don't by several magnitudes), it'd cost about 18mil to replace the whole shield. Realistically, it'll be 180k-1.8mil range.
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Their cost calculations uses speculative numbers and waves away the reduced cost by future re-use. The most expensive part, Booster, has already been caught 3 times with the only failed attempt being an issue with the tower. Engines cost ~$1mil each & Booster has 33. Costs will drop with reuse of it
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The author claims that Starship can take 40-50 tons to orbit with "no obvious way of correcting this"
40-50 tons is referencing only Starship version 1 (IFT1-6).
Version 2 and 3 are the "obvious way".
Stretched tanks, Raptor 3 engines, and additional Raptor Vacuum engines will "correct it".
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I wouldnt put too much weight into that article. It reads like a Starship hate-piece rather than a well researched article.
Neutron will have its niche. It doesnt need to outcompete Starship. Box trucks still exist even though freight trains carry more.
Some of my issues with the article: