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from the bang...zoom...straight...to-the-moon dept.
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NASA chief says a Falcon Heavy rocket could fly humans to the Moon
[...] Until now, it was thought that only NASA's Space Launch System could directly inject the Orion spacecraft into a lunar orbit, which made it the preferred option for getting astronauts to the Moon for any potential landing by 2024. However, [NASA Administrator Jim] Bridenstine said there was another option: a Falcon Heavy rocket with an Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage built by United Launch Alliance.
[...] This plan has the ability to put humans on the Moon by 2024, Bridenstine said. He then emphasized—twice—that NASA's chief of human spaceflight, William Gerstenmaier, has yet to bless this approach due to a number of technical details. His reservations include the challenge of integrating the Falcon Heavy rocket in a horizontal position and then loading Orion with fuel in a vertical configuration on the launchpad. The Falcon Heavy would also require a larger payload fairing than it normally flies with. This would place uncertain stress on the rocket's side-mounted boosters.
"It would require time [and] cost, and there is risk involved," Bridenstine said. "But guess what—if we're going to land boots on the Moon in 2024, we have time, and we have the ability to accept some risk and make some modifications. All of that is on the table. There is nothing sacred here that is off the table. And that is a potential capability that could help us land boots on the Moon in 2024."
(Score: 2, Funny) by DECbot on Tuesday April 02 2019, @07:05AM (9 children)
Strap yourselves in boys, this is Discount Cargo Rocket Lines, where our cargo nearly always gets there. Today's destination: the moon! Don't mind the panels looking like they're about to fall off the rocket. They hardly ever interfere with the launch, and if the landing does gets rocky, don't worry about it. It won't matter if the boosters blow up, 'cause you'll already be on the way to the moon! We'll be getting a firm launch date as soon as we hear back from the construction crews tasked to rebuild the launch tower after last week's prelaunch mishap.
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 02 2019, @07:19AM
Falcon heavy will be NASA's workhouse, NASA has always used the lowest bidder.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Tuesday April 02 2019, @05:14PM (6 children)
FH currently has a 100% launch success rate, though only a 66.6% booster recovery rate.
Both numbers that their competitors would kill for.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday April 02 2019, @10:27PM (5 children)
When evaluating SpaceX for Moon missions, there's a couple of approaches you could take:
1. Falcon Heavy is heavily based on the proven Falcon 9, so it is probably safe to use that and relatively straightforward to human rate it.
2. Falcon Heavy has flown just once (soon to be three times in the next couple of months), so a more exotic rocket could be evaluated, such as Starship or Falcon Super Heavy. Falcon Super Heavy would add two additional F9 cores, potentially allowing for greater payload capability for lunar missions (although sending humans + LOP-G modules on the same rocket is unlikely). BFR would be the best option, but it could require at least another 2 years of work before it starts lifting payloads to LEO, and it would need a bunch of successful missions before NASA would put humans on it.
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(Score: 2) by bob_super on Tuesday April 02 2019, @10:58PM (4 children)
Falcon Super Heavy would look awesome, with a Soyuz-style Korolev cross of four boosters and four simultaneous landings (or two times two if that helps the mission profile).
But the payload fairing is definitely too small to single-handedly achieve the Moon mission, and stacking much more weight up there might just be structurally impossible, even with better vacuum ISP.
Did Elon trash that big drum yet ? The answer might have been four (or 6!) F9-as-FH-side-boosters strapped around an empty 9-meter shell, with the human-rated capsule and the moon lander at the top (because not-a-shuttle).
Sounds crazy, but with enough struts...
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday April 02 2019, @11:43PM (3 children)
That's what I was thinking, though I forgot the words "Korolev cross".
Feasibility would probably come down to the stresses exerted on the center Falcon Heavy core/booster, and that component has been made significantly stronger [teslarati.com]:
Bonus: Air Force funded research into using Raptor engines for Falcon 9/Heavy upper stage [wikipedia.org]. This could be a path to squeezing a little more performance out of the whole rocket.
As you say, the payload fairing volume is a limiting factor. Payload fairing concerns should be thoroughly eliminated by Starship, although I still hope we see a 12-meter diameter rocket [wikipedia.org] in the future.
If you're talking about Starhopper, it has been used for several tests already [teslarati.com] and will be used for hover tests, just without the nosecone. It should probably be considered a big, dumb test platform for the Raptor engine. The orbital version of Starship is already under construction and will hopefully fly this year.
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(Score: 2) by bob_super on Tuesday April 02 2019, @11:58PM (2 children)
No, that [arstechnica.com].
Sadly, i think I read it has been destroyed because of the stainless steel change.
I can't help but wonder what results one would get by making an empty 9m cylinder with this drum, just to link enough F9 cores to throw something really big at the moon (people + lander+ gateway), before return each of the 4/5/6 boosters back to the ground..
Probably less efficient than Super Heavy, but that launch would redefine the word Awesome.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday April 03 2019, @12:34AM (1 child)
Yes, it was destroyed and there are photos:
https://www.teslarati.com/spacex-all-in-steel-starship-super-heavy/ [teslarati.com]
Ars comments speculated that there are good reasons to scrap it:
https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/03/rocket-report-spacex-scraps-costly-tooling-vandenberg-lull-starliner-slip/?comments=1&start=40 [arstechnica.com]
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(Score: 2) by bob_super on Wednesday April 03 2019, @12:48AM
Yup, that's the one I had read. :_(
Back of the envelope math says you can fit 8 5m F9 around a 9m core (made of carbon fiber and really a lot of struts). 72 engines takeoff... drool...
Can we get another billionaire to commission that? Either shatter all launch records, or make a $500M fireball ...
It would "just" need a bit of engine control software, and one hell of a launchpad. The rest is ready to send us to the moon/Mars/Saturn by the end of the year. That's how you do quick-turn reuse, NASA !
/dreaming
(Score: 2, Touché) by khallow on Wednesday April 03 2019, @03:41AM
The irony of the situational sort is that this is still more reliable than the NASA Space Launch System which has yet to fly anything and probably won't achieve Falcon 9 levels of reliability and safety should they manage to get it going.