Since a number of cool things are happening in space exploration these days, we'll widen the scope of this thread a smidge. Conversation about all things space exploration are welcome, whether it be from NASA, SpaceX, ULA, Blue Origin, or anyone else. Chances are most of the discussion will still be about SpaceX since they love to make things public and fun, but nothing's off limits. I'll eventually get around to modifying the OP to include resources for other companies too, but in the meantime, feel free to post any cool stuff you run across.
Tim Dodd (Everyday Astronaut) - A "random dude" who got really into space (particularly SpaceX). He's a great resource for simple explanations of this stuff, as well as live hosting launches.
USLaunchReport - Lost of videos of the more mundane stuff (e.g., booster recovery operations). Not a ton of commentary.
NASASpaceFlight - Live hosting of most launches including a ton of video of Starlink operations.
Glossary
Spoiler!
Space discussions tend to get a little bogged down in jargon, so here's a list of terms you might encounter. (Others, please let me know of others that should be added.)
ASDS - Autonomous Spaceport Droneship - The "barges" that they sometimes land rockets on.
Dragon - The cone-shaped capsule that sits at the top of the rocket for ISS-bound launches that holds the cargo (or, in the future, humans).
F9 - Falcon 9, the name of the rocket itself.
FH - Falcon Heavy, the three-booster version.
GTO - Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit, a type of orbit that will eventually result in the satellite orbiting the earth as it turns so that it seems to be in the same spot from the ground (such as DirecTV or Dish satellites). These types of launches are particularly challenging because they require a lot of power to get them into the right orbit, leaving very little fuel left for landing.
HIF - Horizontal Integration Facility - the building near the launch pad where they put all of the pieces of the rocket together before rolling it out to the pad.
ISS - The International Space Station
JRTI - Just Read The Instructions, the name of the "barge" that they land on for west-coast launches.
LEO - Low Earth Orbit, a fairly low orbit shared by many satellites and ISS. These launches usually require less power to achieve the proper orbit, so the first stage can often be landed back on land rather than on a drone ship.
LZ1 - Landing Zone 1, basically a big open slab of concrete at Cape Canaveral where the first stage will attempt to land (for some launches).
NET - No Earlier Than, basically the date they're hoping to launch, but rocket launches have a tendency of getting delayed.
OCISLY - Of Course I Still Love You, the name of the "barge" that they land on for east-coast launches.
RTLS - Return to Landing Site, a mission where the first stage comes back and lands at LZ1.
Starship - SpaceX's next-generation rocket (and spacecraft) that will hopefully one day take us to Mars. Starship is the "second stage" that will carry cargo or people, but also refers to the whole system. (It's confusing, but think of it like the Space Shuttle, which was both the shuttle itself and the entire launch system.)
Super Heavy - The giant booster that will carry Starship to space.
Originally Posted by DaFace:
While Starship is obviously the most exciting thing going on right now, ULA/Boeing are finally going to try again for their ISS-bound test tomorrow. Fingers crossed nothing else goes wrong.
Personally I hope SH and SS are stacked on the OLT before the Starliner launch. Nice backdrop to put ULA/BOEING/SLA into perspective while they're getting press coverage. At the same time, I hope the Starliner mission is a huge success. [Reply]
Originally Posted by DaFace:
Correct. I believe the outer ring are all fixed, and the inner engines are the one doing the gimbaling.
Yep, just found this:
Final decision made earlier this week on booster engine count. Will be 33 at ~230 (half million lbs) sea-level thrust. All engines on booster are same, apart from deleting gimbal & thrust vector actuators for outer 20.
They recently celebrated the 100th roll-off of a completed Raptor engine, and also eliminated the gimbal / non-gimbal variants. They'll be churning these things out insanely fast I imagine. Well, insanely fast for a rocket engine.
Mars has almost no atmosphere and an explosive decompression is always a moment away? How do you colonize that kind of environment? One defect or stress can result in everyone dying pretty quickly, no? [Reply]
Originally Posted by RINGLEADER:
So a question for those who know more about this:
Mars has almost no atmosphere and an explosive decompression is always a moment away? How do you colonize that kind of environment? One defect or stress can result in everyone dying pretty quickly, no?
Originally Posted by RINGLEADER:
So a question for those who know more about this:
Mars has almost no atmosphere and an explosive decompression is always a moment away? How do you colonize that kind of environment? One defect or stress can result in everyone dying pretty quickly, no?
In all seriousness, I think they've had a LOT of experience with ISS and "explosive" decompression is mostly a movie thing. IIRC, the ISS is currently losing 1lb a day of atmosphere through leaks. A recent Soyouz was found to have a hole rooted in a manufacturing mistake. The spacecraft survived launch and docking with the hole. Leaking atmosphere is just life in space.
Couldn't find the 1lb per day loss I mentioned, but assuming my Duck-Fu is just not strong today, but there has been a known leak for a year...
"The air leak in the Zvezda module, which provides living quarters for crew members and life support systems, was detected last year. It poses no danger to the crew but persists despite attempts to fix it by sealing cracks." https://www.reuters.com/world/europe...le-2021-07-31/ [Reply]
But yes, people would have to live in pressurized environments. The pressure on Mars is something like .09 PSI and on Earth it's 14.7 PSI. Quite a delta P although I'd imagine that we wouldn't pressurize at 14.7 on Mars.
And, after a while, there would be a large volume of air in that environment, so there'd be some time before the Martians would be sucking Mars' atmosphere. [Reply]
