Then Orion is the choice for you. For Kessel Run, the Centurion is a choice.
I, for one, will stay for now with a heavily modified Cobra Mk III.
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Come on with a trade now and credits up front, throw in a better engine and shield system!
Still a nice upgrade to my Tarsus. Even with basic options.
Yes! Thatâs the one. Thanks!
The guy doing the video is too young to remember the moon shots; likely thinks they were Hollywood. Bonus points for using a football field as a unit of measure, though; seeing as nobody is capable of figuring out what meters are. Half a century on, and all we have is a bit faster computer.
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Delta IV Heavy, REPRESENT!
Hold down that Afterburner key, and donât let go.
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I gave him points for at least qualifying it as an American football field.
Keep in mind, folks, that this is essentially a promo video, not one to relay or document technical specifications. The size of an American football field is easier to visualize than, say, 83.61m^2. âTwice as hot as molten lavaâ also sounds a whole lot more exciting than â(7002) to (12002) °C.â
Yeah, they can get away with the Delta IV Heavy on this flight because itâs unmanned. The D-IV/H will be a⌠bit of a challenge⌠to man-rate. (-:
Putting crew atop a rocket thatâs been known to set fire to itself may not be advisable. (-:
Came to scour the comments for just that point. Nice answer @bbfreak. I presume the potency of the Van Allen Belt doesnât stay constant either, and will need to be measured in its current state.
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Well, keep in mind the Delta series are famous for failing on the test stand, and even doing horrific things in flight (such as you linked) but they always put their bird in orbit. Well, nearly always⌠Wikipedia says there have been more than 300 Delta rockets launched, with a 95 percent success rate, and thatâs including the short-lived Delta III which was kind of a flop. When I left the industry many years ago, the Delta family were by far the most dependable launch vehicle we had, despite their foibles. Iâd totally ride a Delta IV.
But I believe the Orionâs supposed to go on the new SLS for manned flight. And if you think SLS is a dumb name (because it is) at least itâs not Ares or Orion for chrissakes.
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The Delta IV was never meant to be a manned lifter - it was just an âEvolved Expendableâ for DOD launches - the only reason itâs being explored for manned use is because of uncertainties around the supply of Russian RD-180 engines for the Atlas V.
Orion may be launching on the SLS, but the Delta IV is being eyed as backup for plans to use the Atlas V for both the Boeing ISS crew transport (the CST-100) and Sierra Nevadaâs Dream Chaser spaceplane.
The âsets itself on fireâ behavior isnât really very dangerous, but it does greatly complicate the sensor environment at launch. Makes it hard to tell if the rocketâs blowing up or just setting itself on fire as usual. (-:
And as Iâm sure you know, man-rated rockets always want the earliest possible notice that theyâre blowing up. (-:
As for the name âSLSâ, Iâm okay with it - itâs fitting for the Frankensteinâs monster of leftover shuttle parts that the initial examples will be.
But at least this time theyâve got the good sense to throw away the SRB casings instead of trying to reuse them.
Thiokol didnât want to do reusable segmented steel casings joined with O-rings. The design boys wanted case-on-propellant technology - casting the solid fuel first, spraying on the insulation layer, then building the case by wrapping the insulated fuel in complex patterns of filaments and embedding the attachment fittings for the nozzle etc. during the filament winding process. But NASA insisted on reusable boosters, and insisted that they had to use âproven technologyâ (such as O-rings) even though the disadvantages of the old tech were well âprovenâ too. I donât know if the disposable, ultra-light carbon filament case-on-propellant concept ever even reached anyone important at NASA, since their specifications basically ruled out disposables from the get-go. Itâs too bad, though - some of the engineers were really fired up with ideas back then. At one point they were experimenting with designs for catalytically inhibited solid fuels, although I donât think that ever got any traction either. Cool stuff.
Man, that was a long time ago⌠I got out of the rocket biz while Reagan was still in office, although my father stayed in until he retired, and my brotherâs still doing satellite control stuff. All my knowledge is dreadfully out of date! I enjoy conversations with people like you and Xeni who are doing a better job of tracking the current space programs.
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Yep, the Shuttle program had a long and painful history of ruling out more sensible designs in favor of Reusability At Any Cost.
And, boy, was that costly. )-:
The follow-on boosters for the later-block configurations of the SLS intend to replace the 5-segment shuttle-based SRBs with âadvanced boostersâ, which may or may not be monolithic filament-wound solids. They might be liquid-fuel - âuncertain is the futureâ (-:
ATK, the lineal descendant of Thiolkol, uses graphite fiber-wound epoxy composite casings on its GEM (âGraphite-Epoxy Motorâ) series of solid strap-ons, which are widely used - in fact, the Delta IV Medium+ configurations use GEM-60s.
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I remember hydraulically burst testing predecessors of those at Morton-Thiokol (the organization in between Thiokol and ATK). The concrete test bay was lined with green oak at least four, possibly six inches thick, just in case some air got into the case during the test.
Are the GEMs case-on-propellant, though? We made a lot of carbon wound cases on mandrels and then poured the fuel into them, back in the 80s and even earlier⌠fiberglass wound rocket motor casings probably go back to the 40s.
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Please elaborate?
When I heard it the idea was for a ground-launched stand-off missile that would have a tear-off strip marked in miles, and if the enemy pillbox was 53 miles away your soldier would tear it off at 53, and fire the sucker. Itâd take a ballistic line of sight flight path that would end 53 miles away, because the remaining fuel would not burn. It would be immune to smart countermeasures because it wouldnât have any smarts. I donât know actually how far they ran with it⌠apparently the chemistry was working, though.
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Iâll have to look into the chemistry, brief sniffing around indicates it is interesting.
A possible alternative could be a linear shaped charge thatâd blow off the motor (or open its casing, or just blow off the nozzle, the challenge here is introduction of only negligible trajectory disturbance, assuming no guidance in the missile). Safety systems for the Shuttle SRBs had such blow-open charges, AFAIK.
Sure, and you donât necessarily even need a charge for that; a small gas generator can be used to open a blowout port. This idea was for something that required no control system, though - not even a timer. I thought it was a cool idea (actually I still think itâs pretty cool, which is why I still remember it after all this time).
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It definitely IS cool.
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