@@ElixirCortez Are you kidding me? It was a month between launches and they couldn't catch it. The finish is in sight be we're not there yet and there are a lot of difficult problems left that haven't been solved with many great minds trying to figure it out.
A few nitpicks at 2:08 . The Shuttle had TWO converted 747 carriers, plus custom cranes at multiple sites to mate the orbiter to the 747. It also had at least two fleets of ground-support equipment for saving and processing the orbiter immediately after landing. Maybe a dozen vehicles? One at KSC, and another at Edwards, which occasionally had to be driven or shipped to White Sands. Their operation wasn’t maritime, but didn’t look cheap to me.
Last I heard, ULA had dropped the plan to capture the parachute in flight and simply have the engine section splash down, with the heat shield doubling as a buoyancy device. I think Tory Bruno mentioned it in an interview a few months ago. A ship was going to be needed for support anyway, and the heat shield test showed it should float, so dropping the helicopter made it easier.
@@HALLish-jl5moRocket labs Rutherford engines have done just fine being submerged. ULAs engines would only receive backsplash since they’d be sitting atop the re-entry decelerator.
Counter against FTC anyltitrust lawsuit. How to sue and claim monoply when the owner is actively leaking and still their competition cannoy built it. FTC will get laugh out of court.
The McDonnell Douglas DC-X/XA vehicles were vertical takeoff/vertical landing (VTOVL) technology development test vehicles. Total cost was ~$100M. Eleven test flights were achieved. $9M per flight is hardly gouging the government for as much money as possible. The DC-X/XA vehicles were built and flown by a rapid prototyping team consisting of about 60 workers. The Lockheed X-33 program cost NASA about $950M and a total of zero test flights were made before NASA cancelled the program. That's what gouging looks like. Lockheed's vaunted Skunk Works was responsible for the X-33 debacle. Side note: I worked on the DC-X/XA base heatshield for a few months in 1992.
I think he meant it as being initiatives driven from government contracts, versus commercial ventures. However, from a funding perspective, due to public-private partnerships, even the commercially initiated projects have significant government funding, the difference being the scope, and which group took the initiative.
Neutron clearly is the most compelling competitor given Archimedes, pad, and cheap robotic structure manufacturing are in advanced stages launch mid 2025 likely. Their Wallops pad infra including landing pad and cleaner than Merlin Methalox Archimedes run at lower power than Raptor, as the fairings flown back dry all make recovery and refurb simpler and cheaper than F9. RKLB 🚀
26:40 Although I haven't read all of the Stoke Space Nova draft yet (it's 691 pages!) but my research places the approximate burn times for the 1st and 2nd stage at 175s and 684s respectively (the 2nd stage number includes reuse propellant). On page 532 of The Draft, it lists a static fire as taking 175 seconds, while the 1st stage burn, while in or below the mesosphere as taking 161 seconds. From the data, such as the total mass of propellant emitted not matching the total capacity, the difference in time is the short period the 1st stage is firing it's engines outside the mesosphere, and therefore the 175 seconds of the static fire can be assumed to be the total 1st stage burn time, or at least the burn time until MECO (and then boost back, reentry and landing burns use up the missing 3,705 kg (compare the total propellants to the static fire propellants, also The Draft is for an expendable configuration). (Note: I didn't use the method below for the 1st stage because the Isp can change drastically over the 1st stage flight profile). For the 2nd stage, I assumed 430s of Isp (from Devon Papandrew's interview, it's linked for the Wikipedia source), 111kN thrust (The Draft, page 25), and total propellant mass of 18,000kg (The Draft, page 25). The thrust of an engine is given by F=g*Isp*ṁ. Rearrange and solve gives a mass flow rate of ṁ=26.3kg/s. Divide the total propellant mass by the mass flow rate to get total burn time = 684 seconds. Due to it not burning at max thrust the whole time, and of course the propellant reserve needed to deorbit, reenter, and land, that number may drop to somewhere around 500-550 seconds of burn time during full reuse. This puts it around, or slightly ahead of Centaur III in terms of burn time.
It's actually pretty likely. Unless there are stubborn problems with reuse of the heat shield there's little reason to not catch & re-fly the ship by mid-2025, considering the precision of Flight 6 landing. The only question is where to catch it. Neutron 1st flight is NET end of 2025 and reuse likely won't happen right away. New Glenn will launch fairly soon but a successful landing and re-flight aren't guaranteed for the first couple of flights.
I mean it does have the advantage that it doesn’t require 10 launches. For a interplanetary payload like a Europa clipper I imagine it would be cheaper as the second stage is more than likely to be expended
@@sussyscylla3414 for deep payload, yes, but so can an expendable -optimized Starship. For HLS, Blue moon requires 7 launches at least, of wich 5 are refuellings
@@sussyscylla3414 10 or 20 refueling flights isn't a disadvantage. It's like saying the disadvantage of a cross country trip is that you need to refuel multiple times on the way to your destination vs some vehicle that can do the trip on one tank of gas but is super expensive.
@@kukuc96 Falcon Heavy is fairing constrained, so its peak mass to orbit numbers are fake, and its power is largely only useful for boosting payloads to higher orbits. Consider that Falcon 9 flying Starlink is already approximately fairing constrained and that has a fraction of the theoretical payload. Falcon Heavy does have a taller fairing that has been underfunded, but it is only a partial solution among the less critical axis.
I was born in the 80's and grew up with the OG internet so appreciate your website design choices - now I can read all the Eager Space transcripts in my shell using Lynx, which I find deeply cathartic.
@17:39. The SMART reuse architecture is fairly outdated: The helicopter catch has been eliminated in favor of the engine module dropping into the ocean and floating on the HAID until the ship comes alongside and picks it up.
I'm quite excited for Neutron. I've uncharacteristically engaged in some retail investing because I'm so interested in what Rocket Lab is doing. Plus the space systems side of the business is interesting.
Hindsight analysis is the better engineer than trade studies, so regarding Starship-Superheavy choice of being "close to an SSTO", it'll be interesting to see what direction rockets in 10-20 years take. Whether they'll have really beefy 2nd stages to optimize 1st stage RTLS and heating, or really beefy 1st stages to optimize 2nd stage performance through better 1st stage cross range capabilities and reentry heating.
26:00 I did some rough Δv calculations for the Nova rocket using information from The Draft and the Stoke Space Nova Wikipedia page. It should also be noted that Stoke is trying to get the Nova to market ASAP, and therefore The Draft does not reflect the Nova in it's final fully reusable form. Many of the numbers in The Draft are nice round numbers (in lb), so they are closer to estimates rounded up, and probably aren't even the final numbers. The gross liftoff mass is 226,796kg (Draft p.25), Stage 1 propellant mass is 183,705kg (Draft p.25), Stage 2 propellant mass is 17,989kg (Draft p.25). Stage 1 Isp SL: 310s, vac: 345s (Wikipedia, no source given). I'm going to average the two values, as the 1st stage will be climbing through the atmosphere for an Isp avg: 327.5s. Stage 2 Isp: 430s (Devon Papandrew's interview, 2nd link on the Wikipedia page). Payload is 1250kg to 7000kg (Draft p.36). The dry mass = gross liftoff mass - stage 1 propellant - stage 2 propellant - payload = 18,102kg. I'm making the guess/assumption that 25% of the dry mass if for the 2nd stage, making it have 4525.5kg. For payloads less than 7000kg, the gross liftoff mass will be less, so remember that when doing Δv calculations. Using the full 7000kg payload capacity, Δv1 = 5336m/s and Δv2= 3967m/s, and Δvtotal = 9303m/s. Given the stated Δv needed to get to LEO is "around 9km/s, depending on gravity losses, drag, and inclination", this is a good indication the Nova can place 7000kg into LEO in expendable mode. What about reuse? If we assume the orbit requires 9303m/s of Δv (as that may be what's required due to Nova's gravity losses and drag), and 20% of propellant is reserved on both stages for reuse, then the configuration doesn't work (assuming all my numbers are correct, and I still remember how to do math). This is disappointing, but expected; Falcon 9 didn't start out with enough of a performance margin for reuse, and SpaceX is currently dropping hot stage rings on Superheavy because they don't have enough Δv to get the current Starship into orbit and get the Superheavy back to the tower.
"Nicely, we have the continual leak named Elon Musk" - nice line:) Glad that you prominently featured Neutron -- I've long considered it a sleeper, since it's an innovative re-thinking of the standard partially reusable architecture that has the potential of providing the lowest launch cost short of a fully reusable design like Starship or Stoke Space's rocket.
It's so much harder to try to do analysis on other vehicles. Nova is still in development and it will evolve like starship has. New Glenn has been fixed for years but there so little data there.
I think that starship advantage to new glenn is that the whole ship is recoveryable and reduce the cost immeasurable because a second stage build won't be needed to be build
one thing you didn't touch on is if ULA recovers the engines.... they may not have the ability to refurbish them themselves. it might have to go back to blue origin to refurbish who would then charge them a fee for that.
19:05 "Neutron seems to be the only partially reusable rocket designed from first principles" That is a pretty odd claim, as New Glenn, Terran R, and Tianlong-3 are all "clean sheet" designs as well. Sure, Tianlong-3, in particular, was clearly heavily inspired by Falcon 9, but all three of these rockets still only use hardware specifically designed for that rocket.
"first principles" is a very different thing than "clean sheet". Falcon 9 reuse was designed from the perspective of 'what is the absolute minimum needed to add reuse to our cheap disposable first stage'. While those designs are clean sheet, they're all still following the same philosophy. Neutron is the only one to drop the 'cheap disposable' foundation and ask what a first stage might look like when you know reuse will let you amortize construction costs.
@zhentaa New Glenn is not designed with a cheap expendable first stage that should then transition to reuse with minimal effort. It was designed to be reusable from the very beginning and will attempt recovery and reuse on the first flight.
@@plainText384 yes, they're combining the two steps together but it's still basically a standard expended booster with the minimum concessions necessary for reuse.
@@zhentaa There is little that's standard about New Glenn's booster, except that it has rocket engines at the bottom and a second stage on top. It's 7m wide, has no SRBs strapped to the side, runs on LNG, has loads of Aerodynamic features like strakes and fins, has 6 landing legs, and is covered with TPS blankets.
Clean sheet means stepping back and asking bigger questions. Neutron is an answer to the question "if you saw what SpaceX has done and you are really good at carbon fiber, what should your rocket look like?" New Glenn is the answer to the question "how do we build a big rocket that works like falcon 9?" New Glenn is
Your analysis and presentation skills just go over my head. I wish I had 50% of that capability and I could so much better communicate the (partially disruptive) stuff I'm working on...
One thing Peter Beck (Rocket Lab CEO) said in an interview not long after the original announcement of Neutron is that only a third of the cost of a launch is the vehicle. The rest goes into operations. Therefore what actually matters is having a rocket that facilitates a high cadence. Neutron's design spec was for reuse within 24 hours. that makes perfect sense given that there is no recovery/refurbishment of the second stage. You just drop a new second stage (with payload attached) and away you go. The other thing rarely understood is that Neutron's design means the second stage is minimalist in cost. Most of the vehicle cost is recovered with the first stage. I think that a lot of people are so fascinated by the idea of "fully reusable" that they ignore the economics. It's going to be cheaper to have a small expendable part (second stage) if what you get in return is a lighter vehicle that doesn't spend weeks in recovery/refurbishment phase. Also there is a price in full reusability that scarcely gets mentioned. A fully reusable second stage means a second stage with both the mass of thermal protection and structural mass needed for surviving re-entry. The consequence is doubling the mass of the first stage for a given payload, since all that mass needed for the second stage to be reusable means more mass in the booster. The whole thing (yes I'm talking about Starship) becomes even more expensive as a result because (see above) operational costs.
People are correct to be fascinated by the idea of full reusability once you consider for a moment that we still don't have any. We can't solve any problems with it until we have something to work with, so it a good goal to strive for.
@@saumyacow4435 Perhaps. It could be like the moon mission, something we achieve, only to take a step back for sixty years till we get even better technology.
@@thearpox7873 Or we could execute a series of exploration missions to Mars, gradually refining technology over decades. I've no doubt for instance that fusion powered propulsion will mature. But even so, there is no compelling reason to ever exploit or colonise Mars. So let's patiently explore. There's plenty of it.
@@saumyacow4435 I didn't mark you for an AI, but I also have no idea what the cost-competitiveness of reusable rockets has to do with Mars, so I can only assume I've made a fool of myself.
I never considered having an internal second stage. That is genius in my book. Something I hadn’t considered until now, but couldn’t it be possible to return a booster to launch site with some kind of aerodynamic lift like a glider? Have a thin pinch up both sides of the booster, and have actuating flaps to control lift and movement and you could just glide to really anywhere on earth with the huge kick of having the booster provide most of the “oomf”. Maybe it would be too heavy, but if it is carbon fiber where possible and porous aluminum the structure could be super light, and the flaps make the booster have a wide surface area, so light booster and large surface area means less momentum and less heating, and the long glide path reduces heating even more. I guess I am thinking of the shuttle, but the fuel tank is the reusable part instead.
several rocket played with an idea of some form of return for the first stage or at least the engines (the most costly part), few with some form of wing, as it was quite clear that it could work. the only issue, almost every time the recovery tools would eat large part of the payload, and it was already tiny. the falcon nine could do 13 ton to leo if returns to the site, 17 ton if drone ship used, 22 ton if expended. that is a brutal cost in payload to save the rocket.
17:31 This is simply outdated and incorrect information. ULA is not planning to catch the engine section with a helicopter. Like the LOFTID demonstrator, the engine section will splash down softly in the ocean and float on its inflatable heatshield until a marine vessel can recover it.
8:43 Only one of these rockets is actually a Falcon 9 competitor. Tianlong 3 is a Chinese launch vehicle, and political limitations, such as ITAR, are going to prevent almost all of SpaceX's customers from switching to them and vice-versa. New Glenn is significantly larger than Falcon 9, both in terms of payload mass to orbit and especially payload volume to orbit. While some rideshare missions may be competitive with Falcon 9, NewGlenn is mostly going to be competing with Falcon Heavy and Starship. Terran R is probably the only real Falcon 9 competitor, but it is designed to lift about 34% more mass to LEO and it'll have a more efficient upper stage, which should give it at least some set of missions where a reusable Terran R is competing with a Vulcan Centaur, an expendable F9 or a Falcon Heavy for the launch contract.
I think the biggest thing will also be payload capability. For instance, SpaceX had at one time launched its own satellites plus additional ride-share from two other companies. So 1 launch gave three payloads a trip to space. For the others, would they have had to launch 2-3 times to equal that?
Woah woah woah, you lost me at Neutron having more than 35% of delta-v on the booster. The whole point of lightening up the second stage is to improve its mass ratio. The Neutron booster is designed with less heat tolerant materials and more dead weight, so not only does it have a lower mass ratio, the more delta-v on the first stage, the more costly the boostback and reentry burns, especially since they only plan for RTLS. It’s pretty clear to me that they plan to allocate more delta-v to stage 2, where the superior mass ratio is, so that stage 1’s terminal velocity is lower and can perform RTLS at lower cost. Something like an 80-20 split on delta-v, or maybe only 75-25. Edit: it’s worth noting that engine Isp is typically higher on the second stage, which makes putting more than 35% of delta-v on the first stage a pretty bad idea even for an expendable rocket, let alone a first stage with recovery hardware. Edit 2: Another thing, you can clearly tell from the design that the intention is a lower delta-v allocation to the booster. F9 has 9 Merlins on first stage and 1 vac Merlin on the second stage, and the tanks are clearly about 5 times larger on the first stage. Remember, that corresponds to about 35% delta-v on the first stage, because it's carrying a much bigger payload than the second stage (it's carrying the whole second stage itself). Look at Neutron, only 5 Archimedes engines on the first stage and 1 vac engine on the second. Look at the prop tanks, it looks like maybe 4-5 times the propellant on the first stage compared to the second stage. And unlike F9, Neutron booster does RTLS only, and the dead weight of both support structure and fairings have been shifted from the second stage to the first stage, decreasing delta-v on the first stage and increasing it on the second stage for the observed propellant load. Every indication is that Neutron is allocating _more_ delta-v to the second stage than F9, not less. Btw, the reason Vulcan has about 65% delta-v on the first stage is not that it has higher performance, because with higher Isp on the upper stage, you would normally want more delta-v on the upper stage. The real reason is that the first stage has SRBs, which have a lot of performance for their cost and get jettisoned, so it makes the first stage of Vulcan something of a two-in-one package; as the deadweight of the SRBs gets discarded partway through the burn, the first stage of Vulcan is kind of 1.5 or 2 stages by itself, instead of 1. There's another reason the first stage on Vulcan has more delta-v than the upper stage. The rocket is designed to have higher performance specifically for high energy destination orbits and trajectories, a role suited to expendable rockets and rockets with hydrolox upper stages, which matches Vulcan perfectly. Neutron and F9 by comparison are mainly designed to be LEO workhorses.
The claim that Neutron will be doing only RTLS is incorrect. Rocket Lab are offering 3 modes for the booster: expendable, barge landing and return to landing site (RTLS), each with different payload capacity.
@@paulcarter7445 A recent development, I see. 27th of July 2023, according to Wikipedia, there was a design revision for water landings. However, looking at the linked sources, I haven't found any mention of water landings at all, and separate google searches also return nothing. So, source?
@@paulcarter7445 oh here we go, in the Rocket Lab Q2 2023 presentation: "Landing legs: optimized for barge landing, enabling increase in launch availability." That's the only mention. Not very confidence inspiring that they're actually going to commission some barges, though.
@@J7Handle Sir Peter Beck has mentioned barge landings during several interviews. Due to lower fuel requirements, the barge landings have a significant payload advantage over RTLS.
@ huh. Well, in that case, a bit more delta-v will come from the booster because it spends less on boostback, but I still think it will be a little less than F9’s booster (for LEO) given that the Neutron booster has more dead weight and the upper stage has less.
Haven’t watched in a while, my bad. I was reminded that even your speculation is based on data and other creators are biased in bias. Thanks for the hard work!
Since flight 6, Gwynne Shotwell has stated that by latest 2032, F9 and Dragon will be retired in favor of Starship. The estimated 200$/kg to LEO of Starship vs 1,600$/kg for Falcon Heavy (cheaper than F9) will really put the hurt on everyone else, even more than F9 does today.
At 12:51 I think the better representative number for reentry heating is the base area, and there Neutron has 3.5 times the area (which also reduces the landing burn duration). So its even better
It is interesting that the Space Shuttle and the Neutron rocket are in many ways the exact reverse of each other. Which if we assume that Neutron works out well, would mean that the space shuttle program pretty much exactly managed to put the cart before the horse. And that is a rather serious indictment of Nasa. A magnificent achievement - and a complete failure...
Shuttle did great at its real goals. Unfortunately, none of them were cheap and safe access to space. Though it's not terrible for a crewed vehicle compared to dragon.
The surface areas of the neutron and f9 don't track. F9 (and probably neutron) enter like a pencil dive so can't use the full side area, just the bottom areas. 38.5 m^2 for neutron and 10.75 m^2 for the f9.
@Eager Space what would happen to Falcon 9 and heavy if SpaceX slapped a few of the new AR1 engines from Aerojet Rocketdyne to its first and second stage? Since development of the AR1 isn’t complete yet, perhaps we could even re-imagine it as the AR0.5, an RD-191 inspired engine. Would it mean anything usefull besides the cost? Could they stretch the booster or land more often at KSC?
For thrust, 3 AR1s = 9 Merlin 1Ds. You can't land on 3 large engines. Using one leaves you off balance and anyway it can't throttle down enough to do the hoverslam - even disregarding the off-center thrust the engine would send the stage back up once the fuel mass dropped low enough. I'm afraid the AR1 will never fly, it came along too late. Even the Air Force stopped paying for any development.
Great breakdown on these launch vehicles. I is without a doubt that SpaceX will dominate for the next 50 years minimum. With the available information, Rocket Lab will most likely be the #2 with both launch and space systems.
Excellent video. I am surprised I do not see other creators producing videos like this in my feed which is very unfortunate. It is not good to focus all hope on a single entity. Having several competing products is best. Can you imagine if we standardized all cars on the Ford model T. It was a great car that revolutionized transportation. But competition pushed technology to even higher achievement. It seems all the videos I watch have narrowed their coverage from all space vehicles and satellites to SpaceX, which is sad. I think it is crucial that there be many competitors in both the transportation to orbit/beond, and satellite/space habitat production and use, to assure sufficient competition, efficiency, and capability. SpaceX is doing well in showing us what is possible. But is by no means going to be the most efficient solution given sufficient real competition. Thanks for the great video.😊
I definitely want more competitors... The problem with videos like this is that they don't grab eyeballs the way that the more sensational ones do. I made a specific choice to do this sort of video because it plays into both my interests and strengths, but I'm weird. The only creator I know of who is a bit like me is Anthony Colangelo but his stuff is podcast format rather than presentation format.
One nitpick, most types of carbon fiber are actually just as strong in compression as they are in tension, it's transverse loads that they can't handle without layers in different orientations. There are some potential downsides to carbon fiber in compression, like buckling and delamination, but it is nowhere near as major as most people think.
Neutron's tension advantage is significant not just for Stage 2, but also for the payload itself. It means that satellites do not have to be designed to withstand compression, they mainly need to deal with tension.
@paulcarter7445 That's fair, it may take some time for satellite manufacturers to shift to designing for tension, and if they do, they would be committing to launching only on Neutron, but there are definitely potential advantages there.
@@Quasarnova1 One of the main advantages is that it is cheaper and easier to design for tension and reduces overall weight. Imagine a beer can, it's easy to compress it, but very difficult to stretch it.
@@paulcarter7445 I know, and it's worth noting that aluminum is an isotropic material, just as strong in any direction. An idealized aluminum can would do just as well in compression, but as we all know, thin walled vessels like that tend to buckle and fail much earlier than the material can handle.
@@Quasarnova1 that's why tension is easier to manage on satellites than compression - any thin walls need to be thickened or supported if subjected to compression.
SpaceX, they already have a REAL reusable first stage and now a fully reusable super heavy lift vehicle in development while any other company is still on the testing phase before trying to even recover (except blue origin with the new Shepard and now new glenn and technically ULA since they flown the Vulcan twice)
Could you look at and discuss the Nuclear Salt-Water Rocket engine and it's cousin the Lithium Salt-Water Rocket? ProjectRho has a good description.i would be interested in seeing your math on an economy utilizing it.
I have a video on the nuclear salt water rocket in my "crazy nuclear rocket" series. The short answer on the nuclear salt water rocket is that I don't think you can actually build it.
Great video! Did you hear the rumor by Eric Berger that there is a ≥50% probability that SLS will be cancelled? Maybe you could make a video on possible SLS replacements for Artemis. What could bring Orion (or something else?) to the moon instead? E.g. the "Bridenstack"? Or Orion docked onto HLS in LEO?
@@EagerSpace Your best video. But if a Musk-Trump push kills SLS will it be expedient to use an expended Starship as a one-for-one replacement for SLS? The ship becomes a simple second stage with Orion mounted on an extremely necked-down adapter. Payload section is mostly eliminated, saving more mass. The objective is to get this ~second stage to LEO with enough propellant for TLI. I'm poor at numbers but considering Orion's ~22t mass this should work. Human-rating? Starship's flight rate will make that easy, especially since Orion can use its present LAS.
Here is a crazy idea: how about using the Neutron Booster stage paired with a Stoke Orbital Stage that could fit inside the Booster's "hungry hippo" Fairings? No need for the orbital reusable stoke booster to carry fairings or the sturdier payload support, Also since there is no need for a huge vacuum Nozzle (which takes up a lot of space) perhaps you could have bigger fuel tanks in the booster. Any feedback on a Hybrid of the Two of your rockets systems you have reviewed?
Disconnecting the piping on the Vulcan Rocket to eject the Main Engines for recovery is going to be a HUGE nightmare for leaks and failures. If they try this I see a tone of delays and scrubs for every attempted recover.
It's pretty much the same thing that shuttle did to disconnect the external tank. There were some problems with that for shuttle but since Vulcan uses methane rather than hydrogen it should be easier to deal with. It will take time to develop but a lot of that can be done before you fly.
@EagerSpace The shuttle QDs were external.Vulcan shall be internal and inoperable after stack. I'd also question if its 2 QD or 4 QD (Quick Disconnect)
The quick disconnects for the shuttle are just forward of the front of the body flap and are covered with doors for reentry, so they are by necessity internal to the orbiter.
Starship is having heat shield problems. What if it turns out to be impossible to make a heat shield that can survive atmospheric heating and be reused without *any* refurbishment, and they are effectively single-use? This would be a problem for Mars missions. I'm thinking of two scenarios. In the first scenario, two Starships go to Mars. One enters the atmosphere and lands. The second Starship enters Mars orbit and waits, with or without a crew. This requires extra fuel. When the surface mission ends, the Starship launches from the surface of Mars and docks with the Starship in Mars orbit. The surface crew transfers to the orbiting Starship and they safely return to earth. The other Starship is expended. In the second scenario, only one Starship goes to Mars. It lands, and the crew carries out the mission. When the surface mission ends, they launch from Mars, head to earth, and enter earth orbit. This also requires extra fuel. Then a second Starship is launched and docks with the ship in from Mars. The crew transfers to the second Starship and safely re-enters. The other Starship is expended. In both scenarios the heat shields only endure one atmospheric entry, but in both cases extra fuel is needed to enter planetary orbit. Also, in each case, a Starship is expended. Is this even practical, and if it is, what does it do to Starship's payload capacity to and from Mars?
To put it bluntly. Falcon 9: Just make it work with mostly traditional method. Star ship: use more hightech engines and fuel, and use the scale advantage. Neutron: Use high tech building material throughout to make it all over a better rocket My guess is that Neutron is going to start to pick up Falcon 9 market when it start to ramp down. It seams like its the most optimal solution. But eventually someone probobly figure out a way to land a downrange rocket that is not on a drone ship. What about just a small island with a landing pad. Could theoretically just fuel it and fly it back, it would even need that much fuel. Using aerodynamics could probobly hit very close to the pad on the way down and only a tiny amount of fuel would be needed to actually stop the rocket.
I talk about this in the super heavy drone ship video, but the big problem is that you launch in different directions depending on what you are doing, so there's no one place you can land. And you need to set up infrastructure and marine assets to get fuel out to wherever you land.
If you build a first stage which acts as a suborbital spaceplane, you should be able to separate at a much higher velocity, and still return to the launch site. Either by landing downrange, and doing a ferry flight home (using jet engines) or by just directly flying home (plausibly with jet engines). Then you upper stage could either be a simple solid fueled kick stage, or you could have a simpler reusable craft in orbit. As the payload to second stage ratio would be better, you could have a higher heat shielding mass on the second stage.
Dawn aerospace is working towards this, and it's an interesting architecture. You do need to be close enough to get back to your launch site and that will limit how late you stage. You now need the added mass of wings, landing gear, jet engines, and jet fuel tanks.
@@EagerSpace Assuming a modest mass ratio of 6 to 1 for the first stage and a specific impulse of say 350 s (assuming no change of Isp during flight), you could launch an upper stage with a wet mass (with payload) that is 20% of the first stages dry mass. Thus the overall mass ratio would be 5 (6/1,2) for the first stage burn, yielding a delta-v of 5,5km/s. Assuming you need 9,5km/s to get to orbit, that would require the upper stage to perform a 4km/s burn. With a 350s Isp you would get a mass into orbit of around 31% of your upper stages wet mass. Assuming a mass ratio for the upper stage that is likewise 6 to 1 (to account for the heat shield etc.), you would get around 17% of the upper stage wet mass as payload. With these very modest mass ratios you would still get 0,5% of your liftoff weight into orbit. Not as great as the Starship or Falcon 9, but it might be a lot less technically demanding to build and maintain. It will surely be an interesting tradeoff, and it might go either way between these approaches.
Falcon 9 gets about 3% in partially reusable drone ship mode. The problem with 0.5% payload fraction is that it's hugely sensitive to weight gain. That means you are at risk of engine up with negative payload and you therefore need to deploy expensive materials and construction to keep it light enough.
I think New Glenn and ULA will compete quite well for GTO launches. Reusable second stages are not well suited to GTO and Falcon 9 GTO mass is rather low. Falcon heavy is a GTO contender however seems rather expensive. I think you're right on Neutron being promising for LEO competition, however, I have some scepticism on their capacity to execute. The team there has only ever launched an extremely simple rocket to orbit, the jump in complexity from electron to neutron is immense. They seem to have had a lot of investment but with relatively low income, and minimal DoD launches, I don't think they are financially sound in the way SpaceX is. I have zero faith any new rocket companies that have started in the last few years will find a hole in the market. I expect most will pivot to defence applications (especially outside the US).
"The team there has only ever launched an extremely simple rocket to orbit". Electron's small size makes it technically harder to launch successfully - that's one of the reasons why SpaceX gave up on Falcon 1, and why so many small launch companies have failed.
One slight nitpick regarding Neutron's development cycle. If they choose to use the carbon fibre tape laying approach, where the component is built up additively using a freely moving robot, they could minimise the use of moulds and allow for faster prototyping, as well as having an easier time making use of things such as fibre alignment to enhance strength.
I wanted to talk purely about the booster, so I didn't talk about fairings. I don't think they're relevant for the booster question because they are really light
@@EagerSpace Understood. Still, they cost around $6M to manufacture per pair, and I believe one just did its 21st flight. They do aid the F9's low cost to launch (estimated to be between $15-20M). I was wondering how long BO might take to start reusing the NG's. It all adds up, cost wise. You're right, they don't affect the booster, but they certainly do the complete rocket. Also, one wonders if ULA and Ariane might attempt to reuse theirs some day. With SX allready doing the booster sea-recovery thing, it just makes so much sense. Some seem to be playing checkers, and SX 3D chess.
I don't think the Stoke Nova is intended to always be stainless steel in construction. I think they're making steel prototypes for the sake of speed - once they have proof of concept they could switch to aluminum and carbon fibre for a production version. I assume it's payload will be tiny to begin with, but if it works, they can make a lighter version. The proposed architecture should be quite cheap, the only expense is propellant, maybe marine assets etc (they plan to mostly do return to launch site)
Hi! Thank You for posting. This is an nice clip... so I did check your channel. I'm sorry but with titles like "Orion Capsule Coverup?" you'll only pull the flim flam wich is not what I'm looking for.
It is an unfortunate reality that TH-cam rewards more edgy titles than more placid ones. This is definitely on the edgy side for me, but I think it's an accurate description of what has happened. NASA claimed they had a small issue with the Orion heat shield. They didn't put any detailed information in their post flight report (I did a FOIA request to get it), and then it's not until more than a year later that we find out through a NASA OIG report that there were significant issues and pictures that NASA had neglected to share in the time since Artemis 1. NASA is required to make that sort of information public in the space act of 1958 that created NASA. When the OIG report was released, NASA announced they would convene an expert panel to look at the issue and they would be done in July. No report from the expert panel has surfaced. That was the state when I made the video. Since then there have been months of silence, until late October when NASA said they knew what the cause was but would not tell us what it was until they did more tests. When you have a major issue that only comes to light because your internal investigational department publicizes it, I think that meets the definition of a coverup. SpaceNews has a decent article about it here: spacenews.com/nasa-finds-but-does-not-disclose-root-cause-of-orion-heat-shield-erosion/
How will they protect the payload aboard the Neutron rocket if its second stage separates below the Karman line? Are they planning to send the Neutron into space?
So I was initially incorrect. It’s a two-piece clamshell attached to the first stage. Perhaps they think there won’t be enough air pressure at staging to hurt the payload.
Vulcan is there mostly because it's a different architecture. New Glenn is a big falcon 9 and therefore unexciting from an architecture perspective. And blue has never run a successful launch company.
Maybe a dumb question, but assuming Starship ends up being even remotely close to what SpaceX is aiming for, how could a partially reusable rocket survive in an industry where something like that exists? Wouldn't the costs difference for getting mass into space be absurdly large?
Yup, that's a problem. Even for Neutron or F9 size payloads Starship will be better. Elon's goal is for the cost per flight to be so low that an F9 size payload can be flown more cheaply on Starship than F9. The analogy someone came up with is if you want to deliver a pizza and have a tractor trailer truck that's cheaper to operate than an SUV - use the tractor trailer! Non-intuitive but it makes sense. Of course, that's IF Starship hits its potential. (Propellant is only 3-4% of a rocket's launch cost, IIRC.) Partial-reuse rockets can survive to an extent. The Department of Defense and NASA have a policy of using two or more launch providers. The DoD puts out big contracts from multiple launches every few years, National Security Space Launch. We're in NSSL-2 now and NSSL-3 contract slots are up for consideration. NSSL-3 will have separate tracks, this is where Electron and Neutron and Stoke can bid for small to medium missions. Vulcan & New Glenn and Starship will take the big ones - but it's possible Vulcan or New Glenn won't make the cut. Even with just F9 flying every other entity was just bidding for second place. Ariane 6 will fly at a low cadence to carry national security payloads for Europe. Ditto for H3 (Japan) and maybe Korea's new rocket. With only a few commercial customers on Ariane 6 the cost per flight will be high, it'll probably be subsidized by the EU.
It's a big falcon 9 in terms of architecture, built by a company that has never flown to orbit before nor run a launch system trying to be competitive on price.
Without SpaceX rocket reusability was out of the question. Now it is the core issue. SpaceX is not the typical money making machine for the board members, it is the gift for humanity. Only SpaceX can make human multiplaneterry species.
Starship does not scale down, huge, so even if cost per kg can be low, cost per launch will likely to be high compared to Nova which is more suited for individual payloads. One is a big bus or train, other is a taxi, not really competitors, there is a need for both.
If cost per launch is much higher for Starship than for Falcon 9, SpaceX's fixed price HLS contract might turn into a money loosing operation similar to Boeing's commercial crew contract. $1.15 B for 10+ tanker flights and one possibility non-reusable crew capable HLS variant.
@@danygauthier605AFAIK Nova to LEO is 5 tons, which covers a large portion of the market, and not bad for a first rocket. It can be also scaled up to any size later, probably the next step could be around 20 tons, which would still compete with Falcon and Neutron, not Starship.
@@EMichaelBall Andy Lapsa recently tweeted that their design scales very well as long as you don't need to transport on road cross country. So it will need an other factory in Florida probably. I think the misunderstanding may come from his explanation to Everyday Astronaut on why a classic annular aerospike is not good for the first stage.
It likely would never have worked. It made some flawed assumptions that the F1 program proved would never have worked. It was a paper idea but an interesting one.
What about the Chinese? They are already test flying a rocket with the Falcon 9's octaweb 9 engine configuration and landing legs. They have also copied the Mechazilla launch tower in 6 months and will be attempting a tower catch next year. The CZ-9 is now just like the Superheavy with both expendable and reuseable upper stages.
It's really hard to evaluate any of the chinese launch companies because there is so little information available. I expect they will get something working but I have no idea what it will be or when.
@@EagerSpace Well, you CAN to some degree. They have launch, hover and landing footage. They also have video of the Mechazilla Clone tower putting the chopstick arms through its paces. So, it's not all behind a veil of secretly or just PPTs.
To do the analysis I want I need detail - stage masses, propellant mass, etc. Building a hopper doesn't tell me much about a real rocket - New Shepard is a good hopper but it's far too heavy to work as an orbital stage. I have the same problem with a bunch of rockets. SpaceX is pretty unique in how much they share.
@EagerSpace Actually, once you know the external dimensions and the material of the booster you can guesstimate it's propellant fraction to within 10% or better. Going from aluminum to aluminum-lithium for instance only gets you 1% on a good day. For CH4/LOX you are looking at about 98% for balloon tanks, 95% for AlLi, 94% for aluminum and 88~90% for steel. LH2/LOX is about 5~6% worse; RP1/LOX is about 1% better.
Race, that infers more than one. Currently a group of one. Ask again when there is actual competition again. And yes I’m familiar with the reusable X-37. It really isn’t in the race. It’s a military system, cost numbers are available.
Hey, you promised you were off volunteering or something instead of making videos. I had an evening of activities planned out but now I'm stuck watching this instead.
about 15 days in 6 day blocks, then we reached our first checkpoint, so I had some time to work on this. Sorry that I messed up your schedule. At least I delayed past flight 6...
The rocket actually lifted off just enough to break connections at the base and then shut off. The weird part is that the escape tower took off without the capsule and then the capsule popped out the chutes.
@EagerSpace well, thankfully it happened on a test flight, imagine being an early astronaut and seeing your escape tower going off prematurely. Maybe not a scary in a redstone as it would've been on an early Atlas
Is Starship actually capable of carrying 120t payload to LEO ? It looks like Starship expends all of its fuel during IFTs and it makes me wonder how big a margin it has.
100t are announced for version 2, which is slated to be introduced soon. Current flight test vehicles are Legacy designs with principally obsolote raptor 2 engines
The version 1 was supposed to be a 100 ton capacity but even Elon mentioned that the real capacity was like 42 ton max (mention that when he presented v2 and v3... ) so let see lol the heat Shield and recovery penalty is massive 😢
@@danygauthier605 No. The FINAL version was projected to carry 100 tons. You people keep pretending throw away test articles are the final design either out of deep ignorance or the urge to be deceptive. Now that projected payload has been expanded since testing and development is driving design rather than the other way around. ANOTHER aspect most of you don't understand at all.
@@imaginary_friend7300 No ignorance or deception. During Starship's development the announced payload was 100-150t. It then dropped to 100t. Then more and more reinforcing stringers and plates had to be added. We had no new estimates until the 42t one. Raptor V3 and the stretched ships will be trying to get back to 100t and more. Can they lighten the construction as they progress from these first ships? On the booster, maybe. But they tried for the lightest they could and then added. Most companies start heavy and then reduce but SpaceX has done the opposite.
I feel like a small(er) fully reusable rocket like nova might have a niche in the crew market. As it stands, dragon is still really expensive on a per seat basis. even even they flew with a full compliment of 7 people it's still something like 12million per person with current flight cost estimates. most of the cost of f9 is the expended second stage, so nova here has a potential edge over f9 if they can get full reuse working. If the most significant cost for launch is the cost of fuel, the price per seat could be brought incredibly low. Sure space X and starship can do 100+ tons to orbit, but you don't really need 100tons to orbit to put 7 or so people into space. A starship stack also uses way more fuel than nova, so unless they take a lot of people the cost per seat is probably going to be pretty high compared to a fully reusable nova. Considering all of the near term commercial LEO destinations are very small (compared to starship) I can see nova being a big contender for the crew transfer market, but they really should pivot in that direction soon if they want to take advantage of that potential.
I don't see Nova ever flying crew. From what I can tell it only has a payload capacity of maybe 5t to LEO (but that doesn't have a great source), definitely more than 1.6t to LEO. For comparison, a modern Soyuz weighs about 7t, and Dragon 2 weighs about 12.5t. Also, the main driver of price per seat for Dragon (~$260M for 4 people on Ax-3) is not the price of the Falcon 9 launch vehicle (~$90M for uncrewed launches), but a combination of lacking competition and the crew-specific systems and procedures.
Can it really be called a race when everyone else is still standing on the start line?
"standing on the start line" is a stretch.
Most haven't bought running shoes yet.
@@ElixirCortez Are you kidding me? It was a month between launches and they couldn't catch it. The finish is in sight be we're not there yet and there are a lot of difficult problems left that haven't been solved with many great minds trying to figure it out.
@@gasdiveand hopefully they won't have to. 😉👍
@@rexmann1984 Yes, I agree. Sorry :)
@@gasdive And even that's a stretch. They don't even know they're gonna race. They're unprepared.
A few nitpicks at 2:08 . The Shuttle had TWO converted 747 carriers, plus custom cranes at multiple sites to mate the orbiter to the 747. It also had at least two fleets of ground-support equipment for saving and processing the orbiter immediately after landing. Maybe a dozen vehicles? One at KSC, and another at Edwards, which occasionally had to be driven or shipped to White Sands. Their operation wasn’t maritime, but didn’t look cheap to me.
Last I heard, ULA had dropped the plan to capture the parachute in flight and simply have the engine section splash down, with the heat shield doubling as a buoyancy device. I think Tory Bruno mentioned it in an interview a few months ago. A ship was going to be needed for support anyway, and the heat shield test showed it should float, so dropping the helicopter made it easier.
Correct. My understanding is that after LOFTID floated *so well* after it's test, using the helicopter made significantly less sense.
Makes me think that they could fill the heatshield with helium and float back to land. 😂
Oof salt water
Makes way more sense
@@HALLish-jl5moRocket labs Rutherford engines have done just fine being submerged. ULAs engines would only receive backsplash since they’d be sitting atop the re-entry decelerator.
Starship flight and Eager Space video the same day? This can´t get better.
fr
Felt
You missed RyanHansenSpace who also delivers very educational videos.
Yes it can, Fraser Cain talking about space stuff with Eric Berger - th-cam.com/video/_igVSf6tyJs/w-d-xo.html
rocket lab is at 20$ per share today
"We have the continual information leak named Elon Musk" 😆
Counter against FTC anyltitrust lawsuit.
How to sue and claim monoply when the owner is actively leaking and still their competition cannoy built it.
FTC will get laugh out of court.
I heard "link" 😅
That bodes well...
@@tychothefriendlymonolith I really wonder what the talks with certain government agencies have been about with him when he's behaved badly
The McDonnell Douglas DC-X/XA vehicles were vertical takeoff/vertical landing (VTOVL) technology development test vehicles. Total cost was ~$100M. Eleven test flights were achieved. $9M per flight is hardly gouging the government for as much money as possible. The DC-X/XA vehicles were built and flown by a rapid prototyping team consisting of about 60 workers.
The Lockheed X-33 program cost NASA about $950M and a total of zero test flights were made before NASA cancelled the program. That's what gouging looks like. Lockheed's vaunted Skunk Works was responsible for the X-33 debacle.
Side note: I worked on the DC-X/XA base heatshield for a few months in 1992.
I think he meant it as being initiatives driven from government contracts, versus commercial ventures. However, from a funding perspective, due to public-private partnerships, even the commercially initiated projects have significant government funding, the difference being the scope, and which group took the initiative.
Even Falcon 9 need more than 60 people to turn around.
Neutron clearly is the most compelling competitor given Archimedes, pad, and cheap robotic structure manufacturing are in advanced stages launch mid 2025 likely. Their Wallops pad infra including landing pad and cleaner than Merlin Methalox Archimedes run at lower power than Raptor, as the fairings flown back dry all make recovery and refurb simpler and cheaper than F9.
RKLB 🚀
Tip I got from a guy that did audio books is to use a dog clicker to mark flubs, they are a nice clear mark in the waveform.
"Bad Eager Space! no treat for you!"
😂😂@@GawainNYC
26:40 Although I haven't read all of the Stoke Space Nova draft yet (it's 691 pages!) but my research places the approximate burn times for the 1st and 2nd stage at 175s and 684s respectively (the 2nd stage number includes reuse propellant).
On page 532 of The Draft, it lists a static fire as taking 175 seconds, while the 1st stage burn, while in or below the mesosphere as taking 161 seconds. From the data, such as the total mass of propellant emitted not matching the total capacity, the difference in time is the short period the 1st stage is firing it's engines outside the mesosphere, and therefore the 175 seconds of the static fire can be assumed to be the total 1st stage burn time, or at least the burn time until MECO (and then boost back, reentry and landing burns use up the missing 3,705 kg (compare the total propellants to the static fire propellants, also The Draft is for an expendable configuration). (Note: I didn't use the method below for the 1st stage because the Isp can change drastically over the 1st stage flight profile).
For the 2nd stage, I assumed 430s of Isp (from Devon Papandrew's interview, it's linked for the Wikipedia source), 111kN thrust (The Draft, page 25), and total propellant mass of 18,000kg (The Draft, page 25). The thrust of an engine is given by F=g*Isp*ṁ. Rearrange and solve gives a mass flow rate of ṁ=26.3kg/s. Divide the total propellant mass by the mass flow rate to get total burn time = 684 seconds. Due to it not burning at max thrust the whole time, and of course the propellant reserve needed to deorbit, reenter, and land, that number may drop to somewhere around 500-550 seconds of burn time during full reuse.
This puts it around, or slightly ahead of Centaur III in terms of burn time.
The deep dive on Neutron here was great.
Will be crazy if both Starship and Super heavy are caught and reused before anyone else even challenges F9 which is partially reused, lol.
It's actually pretty likely. Unless there are stubborn problems with reuse of the heat shield there's little reason to not catch & re-fly the ship by mid-2025, considering the precision of Flight 6 landing. The only question is where to catch it.
Neutron 1st flight is NET end of 2025 and reuse likely won't happen right away. New Glenn will launch fairly soon but a successful landing and re-flight aren't guaranteed for the first couple of flights.
I'm having an intermission for a coffee, but I'm really enjoying this so far, thankyou.
I think you're underestimating New Glenn's market of 'the big rocket NASA can buy as a backup for Starship.' cf. HLS
I mean it does have the advantage that it doesn’t require 10 launches. For a interplanetary payload like a Europa clipper I imagine it would be cheaper as the second stage is more than likely to be expended
@@sussyscylla3414 for deep payload, yes, but so can an expendable -optimized Starship.
For HLS, Blue moon requires 7 launches at least, of wich 5 are refuellings
@@sussyscylla3414 10 or 20 refueling flights isn't a disadvantage. It's like saying the disadvantage of a cross country trip is that you need to refuel multiple times on the way to your destination vs some vehicle that can do the trip on one tank of gas but is super expensive.
It's not nearly big enough as a Starship replacement. It's payload to orbit is about equal to Falcon Heavy (with all 3 boosters reused).
@@kukuc96 Falcon Heavy is fairing constrained, so its peak mass to orbit numbers are fake, and its power is largely only useful for boosting payloads to higher orbits. Consider that Falcon 9 flying Starlink is already approximately fairing constrained and that has a fraction of the theoretical payload. Falcon Heavy does have a taller fairing that has been underfunded, but it is only a partial solution among the less critical axis.
I was born in the 80's and grew up with the OG internet so appreciate your website design choices - now I can read all the Eager Space transcripts in my shell using Lynx, which I find deeply cathartic.
In your terminal
@ in YOUR terminal
@17:39. The SMART reuse architecture is fairly outdated: The helicopter catch has been eliminated in favor of the engine module dropping into the ocean and floating on the HAID until the ship comes alongside and picks it up.
Thanks.
I'm quite excited for Neutron. I've uncharacteristically engaged in some retail investing because I'm so interested in what Rocket Lab is doing. Plus the space systems side of the business is interesting.
I have a few thousand dollars in neutron.
I can't help but believe that putting so much into the upper stage is blowing up the cost - but then again, perhaps that's cheaper than more launches.
Hindsight analysis is the better engineer than trade studies, so regarding Starship-Superheavy choice of being "close to an SSTO", it'll be interesting to see what direction rockets in 10-20 years take. Whether they'll have really beefy 2nd stages to optimize 1st stage RTLS and heating, or really beefy 1st stages to optimize 2nd stage performance through better 1st stage cross range capabilities and reentry heating.
23:40 Agh! I just love how you're so casually dropping these banger lines!
> Nicely, we have the continual information leak named Elon Musk
A 30 minute video? This is gonna be good.
Was it?
@@EagerSpace Yes very good!
26:00 I did some rough Δv calculations for the Nova rocket using information from The Draft and the Stoke Space Nova Wikipedia page. It should also be noted that Stoke is trying to get the Nova to market ASAP, and therefore The Draft does not reflect the Nova in it's final fully reusable form. Many of the numbers in The Draft are nice round numbers (in lb), so they are closer to estimates rounded up, and probably aren't even the final numbers.
The gross liftoff mass is 226,796kg (Draft p.25), Stage 1 propellant mass is 183,705kg (Draft p.25), Stage 2 propellant mass is 17,989kg (Draft p.25). Stage 1 Isp SL: 310s, vac: 345s (Wikipedia, no source given). I'm going to average the two values, as the 1st stage will be climbing through the atmosphere for an Isp avg: 327.5s. Stage 2 Isp: 430s (Devon Papandrew's interview, 2nd link on the Wikipedia page). Payload is 1250kg to 7000kg (Draft p.36).
The dry mass = gross liftoff mass - stage 1 propellant - stage 2 propellant - payload = 18,102kg. I'm making the guess/assumption that 25% of the dry mass if for the 2nd stage, making it have 4525.5kg. For payloads less than 7000kg, the gross liftoff mass will be less, so remember that when doing Δv calculations.
Using the full 7000kg payload capacity, Δv1 = 5336m/s and Δv2= 3967m/s, and Δvtotal = 9303m/s. Given the stated Δv needed to get to LEO is "around 9km/s, depending on gravity losses, drag, and inclination", this is a good indication the Nova can place 7000kg into LEO in expendable mode.
What about reuse? If we assume the orbit requires 9303m/s of Δv (as that may be what's required due to Nova's gravity losses and drag), and 20% of propellant is reserved on both stages for reuse, then the configuration doesn't work (assuming all my numbers are correct, and I still remember how to do math). This is disappointing, but expected; Falcon 9 didn't start out with enough of a performance margin for reuse, and SpaceX is currently dropping hot stage rings on Superheavy because they don't have enough Δv to get the current Starship into orbit and get the Superheavy back to the tower.
24:28 "Version 1, Variant 2, Block 3"
😂
"Nicely, we have the continual leak named Elon Musk" - nice line:) Glad that you prominently featured Neutron -- I've long considered it a sleeper, since it's an innovative re-thinking of the standard partially reusable architecture that has the potential of providing the lowest launch cost short of a fully reusable design like Starship or Stoke Space's rocket.
It's so much harder to try to do analysis on other vehicles. Nova is still in development and it will evolve like starship has. New Glenn has been fixed for years but there so little data there.
I'm starstruck by starship and stoked about stoke space but feel fairly neutral about neutron.
Thats Falcon insane you didnt mention Falcon 9.
I am Glenn that you have not mentioned new glen
Were you electrified by Electron?
@@kieranh2005 actually I’ve always felt pretty negative about Electron. And I’m absolutely positive that Proton is going to make a comeback.
These puns are Terranible,
I think that starship advantage to new glenn is that the whole ship is recoveryable and reduce the cost immeasurable because a second stage build won't be needed to be build
one thing you didn't touch on is if ULA recovers the engines.... they may not have the ability to refurbish them themselves. it might have to go back to blue origin to refurbish who would then charge them a fee for that.
19:05 "Neutron seems to be the only partially reusable rocket designed from first principles"
That is a pretty odd claim, as New Glenn, Terran R, and Tianlong-3 are all "clean sheet" designs as well. Sure, Tianlong-3, in particular, was clearly heavily inspired by Falcon 9, but all three of these rockets still only use hardware specifically designed for that rocket.
"first principles" is a very different thing than "clean sheet". Falcon 9 reuse was designed from the perspective of 'what is the absolute minimum needed to add reuse to our cheap disposable first stage'. While those designs are clean sheet, they're all still following the same philosophy. Neutron is the only one to drop the 'cheap disposable' foundation and ask what a first stage might look like when you know reuse will let you amortize construction costs.
@zhentaa New Glenn is not designed with a cheap expendable first stage that should then transition to reuse with minimal effort. It was designed to be reusable from the very beginning and will attempt recovery and reuse on the first flight.
@@plainText384 yes, they're combining the two steps together but it's still basically a standard expended booster with the minimum concessions necessary for reuse.
@@zhentaa There is little that's standard about New Glenn's booster, except that it has rocket engines at the bottom and a second stage on top. It's 7m wide, has no SRBs strapped to the side, runs on LNG, has loads of Aerodynamic features like strakes and fins, has 6 landing legs, and is covered with TPS blankets.
Clean sheet means stepping back and asking bigger questions. Neutron is an answer to the question "if you saw what SpaceX has done and you are really good at carbon fiber, what should your rocket look like?"
New Glenn is the answer to the question "how do we build a big rocket that works like falcon 9?"
New Glenn is
Your analysis and presentation skills just go over my head. I wish I had 50% of that capability and I could so much better communicate the (partially disruptive) stuff I'm working on...
This is the best space channel
Take a tachyon tablet every time he says cost
Much needed video
One thing Peter Beck (Rocket Lab CEO) said in an interview not long after the original announcement of Neutron is that only a third of the cost of a launch is the vehicle. The rest goes into operations. Therefore what actually matters is having a rocket that facilitates a high cadence. Neutron's design spec was for reuse within 24 hours. that makes perfect sense given that there is no recovery/refurbishment of the second stage. You just drop a new second stage (with payload attached) and away you go. The other thing rarely understood is that Neutron's design means the second stage is minimalist in cost. Most of the vehicle cost is recovered with the first stage.
I think that a lot of people are so fascinated by the idea of "fully reusable" that they ignore the economics. It's going to be cheaper to have a small expendable part (second stage) if what you get in return is a lighter vehicle that doesn't spend weeks in recovery/refurbishment phase. Also there is a price in full reusability that scarcely gets mentioned. A fully reusable second stage means a second stage with both the mass of thermal protection and structural mass needed for surviving re-entry. The consequence is doubling the mass of the first stage for a given payload, since all that mass needed for the second stage to be reusable means more mass in the booster. The whole thing (yes I'm talking about Starship) becomes even more expensive as a result because (see above) operational costs.
People are correct to be fascinated by the idea of full reusability once you consider for a moment that we still don't have any. We can't solve any problems with it until we have something to work with, so it a good goal to strive for.
@thearpox7873 Its a fascinating problem. But a 90% reusable rocket may prove to cheaper to operate than a fully reusable rocket.
@@saumyacow4435 Perhaps. It could be like the moon mission, something we achieve, only to take a step back for sixty years till we get even better technology.
@@thearpox7873 Or we could execute a series of exploration missions to Mars, gradually refining technology over decades. I've no doubt for instance that fusion powered propulsion will mature. But even so, there is no compelling reason to ever exploit or colonise Mars. So let's patiently explore. There's plenty of it.
@@saumyacow4435 I didn't mark you for an AI, but I also have no idea what the cost-competitiveness of reusable rockets has to do with Mars, so I can only assume I've made a fool of myself.
Neutron look like the thing the aliens used on me when they took me
Awesome stuff. Keep it up!
I never considered having an internal second stage. That is genius in my book.
Something I hadn’t considered until now, but couldn’t it be possible to return a booster to launch site with some kind of aerodynamic lift like a glider? Have a thin pinch up both sides of the booster, and have actuating flaps to control lift and movement and you could just glide to really anywhere on earth with the huge kick of having the booster provide most of the “oomf”.
Maybe it would be too heavy, but if it is carbon fiber where possible and porous aluminum the structure could be super light, and the flaps make the booster have a wide surface area, so light booster and large surface area means less momentum and less heating, and the long glide path reduces heating even more.
I guess I am thinking of the shuttle, but the fuel tank is the reusable part instead.
There were concepts for the Buran Boosters to return using foldable wings, like a cruise missile.
several rocket played with an idea of some form of return for the first stage or at least the engines (the most costly part), few with some form of wing, as it was quite clear that it could work. the only issue, almost every time the recovery tools would eat large part of the payload, and it was already tiny. the falcon nine could do 13 ton to leo if returns to the site, 17 ton if drone ship used, 22 ton if expended. that is a brutal cost in payload to save the rocket.
Glide back boosters were how we assumed booster reuse would be done until the 2000s.
I don't think it is impossible. You would need landing gear, wings and a runway.
19:22 they done messed up their staging.
17:31 This is simply outdated and incorrect information. ULA is not planning to catch the engine section with a helicopter. Like the LOFTID demonstrator, the engine section will splash down softly in the ocean and float on its inflatable heatshield until a marine vessel can recover it.
Well put together!
8:43 Only one of these rockets is actually a Falcon 9 competitor.
Tianlong 3 is a Chinese launch vehicle, and political limitations, such as ITAR, are going to prevent almost all of SpaceX's customers from switching to them and vice-versa.
New Glenn is significantly larger than Falcon 9, both in terms of payload mass to orbit and especially payload volume to orbit. While some rideshare missions may be competitive with Falcon 9, NewGlenn is mostly going to be competing with Falcon Heavy and Starship.
Terran R is probably the only real Falcon 9 competitor, but it is designed to lift about 34% more mass to LEO and it'll have a more efficient upper stage, which should give it at least some set of missions where a reusable Terran R is competing with a Vulcan Centaur, an expendable F9 or a Falcon Heavy for the launch contract.
so far; that 'race' has had only one contestant.
I think the biggest thing will also be payload capability. For instance, SpaceX had at one time launched its own satellites plus additional ride-share from two other companies. So 1 launch gave three payloads a trip to space. For the others, would they have had to launch 2-3 times to equal that?
Very interesting and informative as usual. Love the wording of "As close to SSTO as practical"
Thanks. I was pretty pleased with that phrase.
Space X
Next question
Sloths play the long game.
Woah woah woah, you lost me at Neutron having more than 35% of delta-v on the booster. The whole point of lightening up the second stage is to improve its mass ratio. The Neutron booster is designed with less heat tolerant materials and more dead weight, so not only does it have a lower mass ratio, the more delta-v on the first stage, the more costly the boostback and reentry burns, especially since they only plan for RTLS.
It’s pretty clear to me that they plan to allocate more delta-v to stage 2, where the superior mass ratio is, so that stage 1’s terminal velocity is lower and can perform RTLS at lower cost. Something like an 80-20 split on delta-v, or maybe only 75-25.
Edit: it’s worth noting that engine Isp is typically higher on the second stage, which makes putting more than 35% of delta-v on the first stage a pretty bad idea even for an expendable rocket, let alone a first stage with recovery hardware.
Edit 2: Another thing, you can clearly tell from the design that the intention is a lower delta-v allocation to the booster. F9 has 9 Merlins on first stage and 1 vac Merlin on the second stage, and the tanks are clearly about 5 times larger on the first stage. Remember, that corresponds to about 35% delta-v on the first stage, because it's carrying a much bigger payload than the second stage (it's carrying the whole second stage itself). Look at Neutron, only 5 Archimedes engines on the first stage and 1 vac engine on the second. Look at the prop tanks, it looks like maybe 4-5 times the propellant on the first stage compared to the second stage. And unlike F9, Neutron booster does RTLS only, and the dead weight of both support structure and fairings have been shifted from the second stage to the first stage, decreasing delta-v on the first stage and increasing it on the second stage for the observed propellant load.
Every indication is that Neutron is allocating _more_ delta-v to the second stage than F9, not less.
Btw, the reason Vulcan has about 65% delta-v on the first stage is not that it has higher performance, because with higher Isp on the upper stage, you would normally want more delta-v on the upper stage. The real reason is that the first stage has SRBs, which have a lot of performance for their cost and get jettisoned, so it makes the first stage of Vulcan something of a two-in-one package; as the deadweight of the SRBs gets discarded partway through the burn, the first stage of Vulcan is kind of 1.5 or 2 stages by itself, instead of 1.
There's another reason the first stage on Vulcan has more delta-v than the upper stage. The rocket is designed to have higher performance specifically for high energy destination orbits and trajectories, a role suited to expendable rockets and rockets with hydrolox upper stages, which matches Vulcan perfectly. Neutron and F9 by comparison are mainly designed to be LEO workhorses.
The claim that Neutron will be doing only RTLS is incorrect. Rocket Lab are offering 3 modes for the booster: expendable, barge landing and return to landing site (RTLS), each with different payload capacity.
@@paulcarter7445 A recent development, I see. 27th of July 2023, according to Wikipedia, there was a design revision for water landings. However, looking at the linked sources, I haven't found any mention of water landings at all, and separate google searches also return nothing.
So, source?
@@paulcarter7445 oh here we go, in the Rocket Lab Q2 2023 presentation: "Landing legs: optimized for barge landing, enabling increase in launch availability." That's the only mention. Not very confidence inspiring that they're actually going to commission some barges, though.
@@J7Handle Sir Peter Beck has mentioned barge landings during several interviews. Due to lower fuel requirements, the barge landings have a significant payload advantage over RTLS.
@ huh. Well, in that case, a bit more delta-v will come from the booster because it spends less on boostback, but I still think it will be a little less than F9’s booster (for LEO) given that the Neutron booster has more dead weight and the upper stage has less.
Haven’t watched in a while, my bad. I was reminded that even your speculation is based on data and other creators are biased in bias. Thanks for the hard work!
Since flight 6, Gwynne Shotwell has stated that by latest 2032, F9 and Dragon will be retired in favor of Starship. The estimated 200$/kg to LEO of Starship vs 1,600$/kg for Falcon Heavy (cheaper than F9) will really put the hurt on everyone else, even more than F9 does today.
nice video thanks for your time.
Thanks for watching!
At 12:51 I think the better representative number for reentry heating is the base area, and there Neutron has 3.5 times the area (which also reduces the landing burn duration). So its even better
Will depend on their re-entry attitude.
It is interesting that the Space Shuttle and the Neutron rocket are in many ways the exact reverse of each other.
Which if we assume that Neutron works out well, would mean that the space shuttle program pretty much exactly managed to put the cart before the horse.
And that is a rather serious indictment of Nasa.
A magnificent achievement - and a complete failure...
Shuttle did great at its real goals. Unfortunately, none of them were cheap and safe access to space.
Though it's not terrible for a crewed vehicle compared to dragon.
I think the race ended about 6 years ago with a reused Block 5 being launched for the first time.
Cute little channel you got here. I'll subscribe.
Awesome video! Keep it up!
The surface areas of the neutron and f9 don't track. F9 (and probably neutron) enter like a pencil dive so can't use the full side area, just the bottom areas. 38.5 m^2 for neutron and 10.75 m^2 for the f9.
@Eager Space what would happen to Falcon 9 and heavy if SpaceX slapped a few of the new AR1 engines from Aerojet Rocketdyne to its first and second stage? Since development of the AR1 isn’t complete yet, perhaps we could even re-imagine it as the AR0.5, an RD-191 inspired engine.
Would it mean anything usefull besides the cost? Could they stretch the booster or land more often at KSC?
Short answer is that the lower thrust/weight of the AR1 (assuming it's like the RD-180) means that the extra ISP mostly doesn't help.
For thrust, 3 AR1s = 9 Merlin 1Ds. You can't land on 3 large engines. Using one leaves you off balance and anyway it can't throttle down enough to do the hoverslam - even disregarding the off-center thrust the engine would send the stage back up once the fuel mass dropped low enough.
I'm afraid the AR1 will never fly, it came along too late. Even the Air Force stopped paying for any development.
Great breakdown on these launch vehicles. I is without a doubt that SpaceX will dominate for the next 50 years minimum. With the available information, Rocket Lab will most likely be the #2 with both launch and space systems.
Seriously?....it's not EVEN a question, my guy!!! SpaceX!
Fantastic insights, thanks for the video. Really excited for rocket labs neutron
Great Video 👍
I think stoke space is developing the special efficient 2nd engine precisely because otherwise they can't get any payload to orbit
Excellent video.
I am surprised I do not see other creators producing videos like this in my feed which is very unfortunate.
It is not good to focus all hope on a single entity. Having several competing products is best.
Can you imagine if we standardized all cars on the Ford model T. It was a great car that revolutionized transportation. But competition pushed technology to even higher achievement.
It seems all the videos I watch have narrowed their coverage from all space vehicles and satellites to SpaceX, which is sad.
I think it is crucial that there be many competitors in both the transportation to orbit/beond, and satellite/space habitat production and use, to assure sufficient competition, efficiency, and capability.
SpaceX is doing well in showing us what is possible. But is by no means going to be the most efficient solution given sufficient real competition.
Thanks for the great video.😊
I definitely want more competitors...
The problem with videos like this is that they don't grab eyeballs the way that the more sensational ones do. I made a specific choice to do this sort of video because it plays into both my interests and strengths, but I'm weird. The only creator I know of who is a bit like me is Anthony Colangelo but his stuff is podcast format rather than presentation format.
@EagerSpace I definitely appreciate your superior coverage of the state of the world's space launch technology and capabilities!
Thank you 😊
One nitpick, most types of carbon fiber are actually just as strong in compression as they are in tension, it's transverse loads that they can't handle without layers in different orientations. There are some potential downsides to carbon fiber in compression, like buckling and delamination, but it is nowhere near as major as most people think.
Neutron's tension advantage is significant not just for Stage 2, but also for the payload itself. It means that satellites do not have to be designed to withstand compression, they mainly need to deal with tension.
@paulcarter7445 That's fair, it may take some time for satellite manufacturers to shift to designing for tension, and if they do, they would be committing to launching only on Neutron, but there are definitely potential advantages there.
@@Quasarnova1 One of the main advantages is that it is cheaper and easier to design for tension and reduces overall weight. Imagine a beer can, it's easy to compress it, but very difficult to stretch it.
@@paulcarter7445 I know, and it's worth noting that aluminum is an isotropic material, just as strong in any direction. An idealized aluminum can would do just as well in compression, but as we all know, thin walled vessels like that tend to buckle and fail much earlier than the material can handle.
@@Quasarnova1 that's why tension is easier to manage on satellites than compression - any thin walls need to be thickened or supported if subjected to compression.
SpaceX, they already have a REAL reusable first stage and now a fully reusable super heavy lift vehicle in development while any other company is still on the testing phase before trying to even recover (except blue origin with the new Shepard and now new glenn and technically ULA since they flown the Vulcan twice)
ULA has already announced it will not be using helicopter recovery.
Could you look at and discuss the Nuclear Salt-Water Rocket engine and it's cousin the Lithium Salt-Water Rocket? ProjectRho has a good description.i would be interested in seeing your math on an economy utilizing it.
I have a video on the nuclear salt water rocket in my "crazy nuclear rocket" series.
The short answer on the nuclear salt water rocket is that I don't think you can actually build it.
Great video! Did you hear the rumor by Eric Berger that there is a ≥50% probability that SLS will be cancelled? Maybe you could make a video on possible SLS replacements for Artemis. What could bring Orion (or something else?) to the moon instead? E.g. the "Bridenstack"? Or Orion docked onto HLS in LEO?
That'll throw a few more years of delay into Artemis. Maybe thats a good thing..
I did a commercial moon video a while back...
@@EagerSpace Your best video. But if a Musk-Trump push kills SLS will it be expedient to use an expended Starship as a one-for-one replacement for SLS? The ship becomes a simple second stage with Orion mounted on an extremely necked-down adapter. Payload section is mostly eliminated, saving more mass. The objective is to get this ~second stage to LEO with enough propellant for TLI. I'm poor at numbers but considering Orion's ~22t mass this should work.
Human-rating? Starship's flight rate will make that easy, especially since Orion can use its present LAS.
Here is a crazy idea: how about using the Neutron Booster stage paired with a Stoke Orbital Stage that could fit inside the Booster's "hungry hippo" Fairings? No need for the orbital reusable stoke booster to carry fairings or the sturdier payload support, Also since there is no need for a huge vacuum Nozzle (which takes up a lot of space) perhaps you could have bigger fuel tanks in the booster. Any feedback on a Hybrid of the Two of your rockets systems you have reviewed?
I think it's unlikely, but stranger things have happened.
Disconnecting the piping on the Vulcan Rocket to eject the Main Engines for recovery is going to be a HUGE nightmare for leaks and failures. If they try this I see a tone of delays and scrubs for every attempted recover.
It's pretty much the same thing that shuttle did to disconnect the external tank. There were some problems with that for shuttle but since Vulcan uses methane rather than hydrogen it should be easier to deal with.
It will take time to develop but a lot of that can be done before you fly.
@EagerSpace The shuttle QDs were external.Vulcan shall be internal and inoperable after stack. I'd also question if its 2 QD or 4 QD (Quick Disconnect)
The quick disconnects for the shuttle are just forward of the front of the body flap and are covered with doors for reentry, so they are by necessity internal to the orbiter.
@EagerSpace Yes but I don't think that is same as the disconnects and separation required for the entire structural thrust puck.
Starship is having heat shield problems. What if it turns out to be impossible to make a heat shield that can survive atmospheric heating and be reused without *any* refurbishment, and they are effectively single-use? This would be a problem for Mars missions.
I'm thinking of two scenarios. In the first scenario, two Starships go to Mars. One enters the atmosphere and lands. The second Starship enters Mars orbit and waits, with or without a crew. This requires extra fuel. When the surface mission ends, the Starship launches from the surface of Mars and docks with the Starship in Mars orbit. The surface crew transfers to the orbiting Starship and they safely return to earth. The other Starship is expended.
In the second scenario, only one Starship goes to Mars. It lands, and the crew carries out the mission. When the surface mission ends, they launch from Mars, head to earth, and enter earth orbit. This also requires extra fuel. Then a second Starship is launched and docks with the ship in from Mars. The crew transfers to the second Starship and safely re-enters. The other Starship is expended.
In both scenarios the heat shields only endure one atmospheric entry, but in both cases extra fuel is needed to enter planetary orbit. Also, in each case, a Starship is expended. Is this even practical, and if it is, what does it do to Starship's payload capacity to and from Mars?
To put it bluntly.
Falcon 9: Just make it work with mostly traditional method.
Star ship: use more hightech engines and fuel, and use the scale advantage.
Neutron: Use high tech building material throughout to make it all over a better rocket
My guess is that Neutron is going to start to pick up Falcon 9 market when it start to ramp down. It seams like its the most optimal solution.
But eventually someone probobly figure out a way to land a downrange rocket that is not on a drone ship.
What about just a small island with a landing pad. Could theoretically just fuel it and fly it back, it would even need that much fuel.
Using aerodynamics could probobly hit very close to the pad on the way down and only a tiny amount of fuel would be needed to actually stop the rocket.
I talk about this in the super heavy drone ship video, but the big problem is that you launch in different directions depending on what you are doing, so there's no one place you can land. And you need to set up infrastructure and marine assets to get fuel out to wherever you land.
@EagerSpace well... its really a matter of finding a mission you do a lot of times that have the same tryjectory...like a moon/mars refuling mission.
Hold on the Ro-what? You must do a feature length video on the Roton now.
I knew that comment would come back to haunt me...
If you build a first stage which acts as a suborbital spaceplane, you should be able to separate at a much higher velocity, and still return to the launch site. Either by landing downrange, and doing a ferry flight home (using jet engines) or by just directly flying home (plausibly with jet engines). Then you upper stage could either be a simple solid fueled kick stage, or you could have a simpler reusable craft in orbit. As the payload to second stage ratio would be better, you could have a higher heat shielding mass on the second stage.
That's a lot more extra mass.
Dawn aerospace is working towards this, and it's an interesting architecture. You do need to be close enough to get back to your launch site and that will limit how late you stage.
You now need the added mass of wings, landing gear, jet engines, and jet fuel tanks.
@@EagerSpace Assuming a modest mass ratio of 6 to 1 for the first stage and a specific impulse of say 350 s (assuming no change of Isp during flight), you could launch an upper stage with a wet mass (with payload) that is 20% of the first stages dry mass. Thus the overall mass ratio would be 5 (6/1,2) for the first stage burn, yielding a delta-v of 5,5km/s. Assuming you need 9,5km/s to get to orbit, that would require the upper stage to perform a 4km/s burn. With a 350s Isp you would get a mass into orbit of around 31% of your upper stages wet mass. Assuming a mass ratio for the upper stage that is likewise 6 to 1 (to account for the heat shield etc.), you would get around 17% of the upper stage wet mass as payload.
With these very modest mass ratios you would still get 0,5% of your liftoff weight into orbit. Not as great as the Starship or Falcon 9, but it might be a lot less technically demanding to build and maintain. It will surely be an interesting tradeoff, and it might go either way between these approaches.
Falcon 9 gets about 3% in partially reusable drone ship mode.
The problem with 0.5% payload fraction is that it's hugely sensitive to weight gain. That means you are at risk of engine up with negative payload and you therefore need to deploy expensive materials and construction to keep it light enough.
@@EagerSpace The 0,5% payload fraction was a somewhat conservative estimate, specifically to avoid expensive materials.
I think New Glenn and ULA will compete quite well for GTO launches. Reusable second stages are not well suited to GTO and Falcon 9 GTO mass is rather low. Falcon heavy is a GTO contender however seems rather expensive.
I think you're right on Neutron being promising for LEO competition, however, I have some scepticism on their capacity to execute. The team there has only ever launched an extremely simple rocket to orbit, the jump in complexity from electron to neutron is immense. They seem to have had a lot of investment but with relatively low income, and minimal DoD launches, I don't think they are financially sound in the way SpaceX is.
I have zero faith any new rocket companies that have started in the last few years will find a hole in the market. I expect most will pivot to defence applications (especially outside the US).
"The team there has only ever launched an extremely simple rocket to orbit". Electron's small size makes it technically harder to launch successfully - that's one of the reasons why SpaceX gave up on Falcon 1, and why so many small launch companies have failed.
One slight nitpick regarding Neutron's development cycle. If they choose to use the carbon fibre tape laying approach, where the component is built up additively using a freely moving robot, they could minimise the use of moulds and allow for faster prototyping, as well as having an easier time making use of things such as fibre alignment to enhance strength.
Carbon fiber tape is laid into the molds
@@EagerSpace Ah, never mind then. Thanks for the correction.
Rocket Lab has some cool videos showing this somewhere.
NEUTRON
You forgot to mention that the Falcon 9 fairings and interstage are made of CF/AL honeycomb and are reused. They do have some current CF experience.
The video literally mentions that the interstage and landing legs are carbon fiber.
@@EagerSpace Apologies, I missed that. Allthough you still missed the fairings, no?
I wanted to talk purely about the booster, so I didn't talk about fairings. I don't think they're relevant for the booster question because they are really light
@@EagerSpace Understood. Still, they cost around $6M to manufacture per pair, and I believe one just did its 21st flight. They do aid the F9's low cost to launch (estimated to be between $15-20M). I was wondering how long BO might take to start reusing the NG's. It all adds up, cost wise. You're right, they don't affect the booster, but they certainly do the complete rocket. Also, one wonders if ULA and Ariane might attempt to reuse theirs some day. With SX allready doing the booster sea-recovery thing, it just makes so much sense. Some seem to be playing checkers, and SX 3D chess.
I don't think the Stoke Nova is intended to always be stainless steel in construction.
I think they're making steel prototypes for the sake of speed - once they have proof of concept they could switch to aluminum and carbon fibre for a production version.
I assume it's payload will be tiny to begin with, but if it works, they can make a lighter version.
The proposed architecture should be quite cheap, the only expense is propellant, maybe marine assets etc (they plan to mostly do return to launch site)
Hi! Thank You for posting. This is an nice clip... so I did check your channel.
I'm sorry but with titles like "Orion Capsule Coverup?" you'll only pull the flim flam wich is not what I'm looking for.
It is an unfortunate reality that TH-cam rewards more edgy titles than more placid ones. This is definitely on the edgy side for me, but I think it's an accurate description of what has happened.
NASA claimed they had a small issue with the Orion heat shield. They didn't put any detailed information in their post flight report (I did a FOIA request to get it), and then it's not until more than a year later that we find out through a NASA OIG report that there were significant issues and pictures that NASA had neglected to share in the time since Artemis 1.
NASA is required to make that sort of information public in the space act of 1958 that created NASA.
When the OIG report was released, NASA announced they would convene an expert panel to look at the issue and they would be done in July. No report from the expert panel has surfaced.
That was the state when I made the video. Since then there have been months of silence, until late October when NASA said they knew what the cause was but would not tell us what it was until they did more tests.
When you have a major issue that only comes to light because your internal investigational department publicizes it, I think that meets the definition of a coverup.
SpaceNews has a decent article about it here:
spacenews.com/nasa-finds-but-does-not-disclose-root-cause-of-orion-heat-shield-erosion/
How will they protect the payload aboard the Neutron rocket if its second stage separates below the Karman line? Are they planning to send the Neutron into space?
The fairing is not removed. It’s a four piece clamshell design.
So I was initially incorrect. It’s a two-piece clamshell attached to the first stage. Perhaps they think there won’t be enough air pressure at staging to hurt the payload.
They will be out of the atmosphere at staging, the same way falcon 9 is.
I'm stoked for Stoke
(I'm sorry)
I'm sorry but how do you put Vulcan on this list but not new Glenn?
Vulcan is there mostly because it's a different architecture.
New Glenn is a big falcon 9 and therefore unexciting from an architecture perspective. And blue has never run a successful launch company.
what do you think of ISROs NGLV plans?
Not enough info there to have an opinion, though it's clear they are serious.
Maybe a dumb question, but assuming Starship ends up being even remotely close to what SpaceX is aiming for, how could a partially reusable rocket survive in an industry where something like that exists? Wouldn't the costs difference for getting mass into space be absurdly large?
Yup, that's a problem. Even for Neutron or F9 size payloads Starship will be better. Elon's goal is for the cost per flight to be so low that an F9 size payload can be flown more cheaply on Starship than F9. The analogy someone came up with is if you want to deliver a pizza and have a tractor trailer truck that's cheaper to operate than an SUV - use the tractor trailer! Non-intuitive but it makes sense. Of course, that's IF Starship hits its potential. (Propellant is only 3-4% of a rocket's launch cost, IIRC.)
Partial-reuse rockets can survive to an extent. The Department of Defense and NASA have a policy of using two or more launch providers. The DoD puts out big contracts from multiple launches every few years, National Security Space Launch. We're in NSSL-2 now and NSSL-3 contract slots are up for consideration. NSSL-3 will have separate tracks, this is where Electron and Neutron and Stoke can bid for small to medium missions. Vulcan & New Glenn and Starship will take the big ones - but it's possible Vulcan or New Glenn won't make the cut.
Even with just F9 flying every other entity was just bidding for second place.
Ariane 6 will fly at a low cadence to carry national security payloads for Europe. Ditto for H3 (Japan) and maybe Korea's new rocket. With only a few commercial customers on Ariane 6 the cost per flight will be high, it'll probably be subsidized by the EU.
Why is electron surviving when SpaceX has Falcon 9 and it's cheaper per kilogram to fly on Falcon 9?
New Glenn isn't boring at all, it's much bigger than F9 and more closely a competitor to Starship in size and payload.
I would have said FH myself (as a closer competitor for NG).
It's a big falcon 9 in terms of architecture, built by a company that has never flown to orbit before nor run a launch system trying to be competitive on price.
Without SpaceX rocket reusability was out of the question. Now it is the core issue.
SpaceX is not the typical money making machine for the board members, it is the gift for humanity.
Only SpaceX can make human multiplaneterry species.
23:47 Blocks
Starship does not scale down, huge, so even if cost per kg can be low, cost per launch will likely to be high compared to Nova which is more suited for individual payloads. One is a big bus or train, other is a taxi, not really competitors, there is a need for both.
If cost per launch is much higher for Starship than for Falcon 9, SpaceX's fixed price HLS contract might turn into a money loosing operation similar to Boeing's commercial crew contract. $1.15 B for 10+ tanker flights and one possibility non-reusable crew capable HLS variant.
The payload of Nova is only 2.2 ton
@@danygauthier605AFAIK Nova to LEO is 5 tons, which covers a large portion of the market, and not bad for a first rocket. It can be also scaled up to any size later, probably the next step could be around 20 tons, which would still compete with Falcon and Neutron, not Starship.
@szdorant From what I’ve heard (take it how you will), the aerospike concept only goes to a certain size, like that of Nova.
@@EMichaelBall Andy Lapsa recently tweeted that their design scales very well as long as you don't need to transport on road cross country. So it will need an other factory in Florida probably. I think the misunderstanding may come from his explanation to Everyday Astronaut on why a classic annular aerospike is not good for the first stage.
Starship. There. Saved you from going through the whole video.
Seadragon was an interesting reusable concept. Sadly it disn't go anywhere
It likely would never have worked. It made some flawed assumptions that the F1 program proved would never have worked. It was a paper idea but an interesting one.
I have two seadragon videos...
It's a fun concept but it's really unlikely it would have worked.
What about the Chinese? They are already test flying a rocket with the Falcon 9's octaweb 9 engine configuration and landing legs. They have also copied the Mechazilla launch tower in 6 months and will be attempting a tower catch next year. The CZ-9 is now just like the Superheavy with both expendable and reuseable upper stages.
It's really hard to evaluate any of the chinese launch companies because there is so little information available. I expect they will get something working but I have no idea what it will be or when.
@@EagerSpace Well, you CAN to some degree. They have launch, hover and landing footage. They also have video of the Mechazilla Clone tower putting the chopstick arms through its paces. So, it's not all behind a veil of secretly or just PPTs.
To do the analysis I want I need detail - stage masses, propellant mass, etc. Building a hopper doesn't tell me much about a real rocket - New Shepard is a good hopper but it's far too heavy to work as an orbital stage.
I have the same problem with a bunch of rockets. SpaceX is pretty unique in how much they share.
@EagerSpace Actually, once you know the external dimensions and the material of the booster you can guesstimate it's propellant fraction to within 10% or better. Going from aluminum to aluminum-lithium for instance only gets you 1% on a good day. For CH4/LOX you are looking at about 98% for balloon tanks, 95% for AlLi, 94% for aluminum and 88~90% for steel. LH2/LOX is about 5~6% worse; RP1/LOX is about 1% better.
Race, that infers more than one. Currently a group of one.
Ask again when there is actual competition again. And yes I’m familiar with the reusable X-37. It really isn’t in the race. It’s a military system, cost numbers are available.
Hey, you promised you were off volunteering or something instead of making videos. I had an evening of activities planned out but now I'm stuck watching this instead.
about 15 days in 6 day blocks, then we reached our first checkpoint, so I had some time to work on this.
Sorry that I messed up your schedule. At least I delayed past flight 6...
@EagerSpace flight 6 wrecked my afternoon.
This is what sucks about following Space-stuff. It's all so spontaneous and fast-paced.
That's why I don't do quick reaction videos.
Neutron is intended to do RTLS?
That's just one of the options, it will also do barge landings and a fully disposable launch.
19:27 😰
Version 1, variant 2, block 3 😂
Like and subscribe or ... Premature escape tower?
The rocket actually lifted off just enough to break connections at the base and then shut off. The weird part is that the escape tower took off without the capsule and then the capsule popped out the chutes.
@EagerSpace well, thankfully it happened on a test flight, imagine being an early astronaut and seeing your escape tower going off prematurely. Maybe not a scary in a redstone as it would've been on an early Atlas
Other space companies have a concept of a rocket.
Is Starship actually capable of carrying 120t payload to LEO ? It looks like Starship expends all of its fuel during IFTs and it makes me wonder how big a margin it has.
100t are announced for version 2, which is slated to be introduced soon. Current flight test vehicles are Legacy designs with principally obsolote raptor 2 engines
The version 1 was supposed to be a 100 ton capacity but even Elon mentioned that the real capacity was like 42 ton max (mention that when he presented v2 and v3... ) so let see lol the heat Shield and recovery penalty is massive 😢
@@danygauthier605 No. The FINAL version was projected to carry 100 tons. You people keep pretending throw away test articles are the final design either out of deep ignorance or the urge to be deceptive. Now that projected payload has been expanded since testing and development is driving design rather than the other way around. ANOTHER aspect most of you don't understand at all.
@@imaginary_friend7300 No ignorance or deception. During Starship's development the announced payload was 100-150t. It then dropped to 100t. Then more and more reinforcing stringers and plates had to be added. We had no new estimates until the 42t one. Raptor V3 and the stretched ships will be trying to get back to 100t and more.
Can they lighten the construction as they progress from these first ships? On the booster, maybe. But they tried for the lightest they could and then added. Most companies start heavy and then reduce but SpaceX has done the opposite.
Is it because Stoke uses hydrogen for the 2nd stage? Does that change the maths
Is what because of that?
I feel like a small(er) fully reusable rocket like nova might have a niche in the crew market. As it stands, dragon is still really expensive on a per seat basis. even even they flew with a full compliment of 7 people it's still something like 12million per person with current flight cost estimates. most of the cost of f9 is the expended second stage, so nova here has a potential edge over f9 if they can get full reuse working.
If the most significant cost for launch is the cost of fuel, the price per seat could be brought incredibly low. Sure space X and starship can do 100+ tons to orbit, but you don't really need 100tons to orbit to put 7 or so people into space. A starship stack also uses way more fuel than nova, so unless they take a lot of people the cost per seat is probably going to be pretty high compared to a fully reusable nova. Considering all of the near term commercial LEO destinations are very small (compared to starship) I can see nova being a big contender for the crew transfer market, but they really should pivot in that direction soon if they want to take advantage of that potential.
I don't see Nova ever flying crew. From what I can tell it only has a payload capacity of maybe 5t to LEO (but that doesn't have a great source), definitely more than 1.6t to LEO. For comparison, a modern Soyuz weighs about 7t, and Dragon 2 weighs about 12.5t.
Also, the main driver of price per seat for Dragon (~$260M for 4 people on Ax-3) is not the price of the Falcon 9 launch vehicle (~$90M for uncrewed launches), but a combination of lacking competition and the crew-specific systems and procedures.
Sorry to tell you this but the payload capacity of Nova is just 2.2 ton way to low for a crew capsule
@@danygauthier605 I'm aware of that. they need to scale up to a larger vehicle regardless imo