Private manned spacecraft. First manned flights as early as 2016.

http://boingboing.net/2014/05/29/sp...ragon-2-sp.html

To paraphrase someone on Twitter, Elon Musk may as well change his name to Tony Stark.





http://new.livestream.com/spacex/Dr...videos/52348399
http://new.livestream.com/spacex/Dr...videos/52348399

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NAR #27085 - Oregon Rocketry - SAM

Now THAT is worth a..............




WOW!!

I watched the live unveiling, pretty cool. I like how it lands like they did in the old sci-fi movies. The control console is cool in that it's very Star Trek like.

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Scott D. Hansen
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It's exciting to see the use of 3D printing involved in those Super Draco thrusters. If they can continue to develop that technology, there's no reason it can't be scaled up and applied to the construction of larger engines. Imagine being able to design a main engine in the computer, and after tweaking the components there, immediately "printing out" those parts and building a complete engine in less than a day or two, and testing it on a stand within a week!

SpaceX has said the Merlin 1D uses fewer components and was designed for more "rapid manufacturing", so maybe they already are using 3D technology on some of the components.

SpaceX might be the company that develops a comparable power-class engine to those Russian-made RD-180s used in the Atlas. It currently takes nine Merlin 1D's to produce the same power as one RD-180; you have to imagine Elon thinking along these same lines. Reducing the parts count also means reducing the time needed to build a "power set" for a Falcon.

I can imagine a single-engined booster for the Falcon, perhaps a dual-chamber model, or even a quad-chamber. That's how the RD-180 does it -- dual chambers/nozzles, but a central common turbopump assembly feeding both. Elon could do the same with the Merlin design.

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Craig McGraw

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SAM 0044
AMA 352635

The govt should give free reign....heck they should PAY SpaceX, Rocketdyne, Aerojet and whoever else to reverse engineer and copy the heck out of the RD180. They did it to us and our allies many times. A couple of more famous examples: Rolls Royce jet engine copy that went into the Mig 15, and a complete down to the nuts and bolts copy of the Boeing B-29.

Russia has already announced a ban on selling them to the US for "military" applications. If they could handle the costs and all the technical aspects of the ISS, they would cut us off completely from it also.

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Brownsville, TX launch site

Was going to ask that but didn't want to hijack the thread. Can't believe we don't have the technology to simply clone the RD-180. A few months should be enough. If we can't we're *really* in trouble.

We do have the technology and ability to clone it. We just won't do it because it opens the door for them to openly clone any of our stuff. As for the timetable, we still would have to set up all the tooling etc., which would likely take us more than a few months. That doesn't include the time we'd have to add due to our superiority complex...wanting to improve on a design that's already dead reliable.

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I love sanding.

Holy RockSim, Batman!





Not to mention that a single large engine, once it has been perfected, is more reliable than nine smaller ones. SpaceX is not doing that big cluster because it is fun.


Bill

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It is well past time to Drill, Baby, Drill!

If your June, July, August and September was like this, you might just hate summer too...

Please unload your question before you ask it unless you have a concealed harry permit.

: countdown begin cr dup . 1- ?dup 0= until cr ." Launch!" cr ;

Give a man a rocket and he will fly for a day; teach him to build and he will spend the rest of his days sanding...

I had always thought that the rationale we had for buying Russian engines was time and money savings.


Bill

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It is well past time to Drill, Baby, Drill!

If your June, July, August and September was like this, you might just hate summer too...

Please unload your question before you ask it unless you have a concealed harry permit.

: countdown begin cr dup . 1- ?dup 0= until cr ." Launch!" cr ;

Give a man a rocket and he will fly for a day; teach him to build and he will spend the rest of his days sanding...