Successful Falcon 9 Launch

[Darwin333]

Solid rocket boosters provide more thrust per lb and don't have the refrigeration requirements that liquid fuel has. When designing the space shuttle they needed to get the payload higher for Pentagon for satellite deployment so they opted for solid rocket boosters that allowed the higher payloads. Several un-manned rockets that launch satellites use strap-on solid boosters for exactly this purpose.

Is that still true to this day? Why do solid fuels give more thrust per lb? Thanks for satisfying my nerdy curiosity btw.

 

[ichy]

Those aren't examples of a bloated bureaucracy. Those are examples where their cost:benefit analysis was incorrect/failure because of the bypass of safety regulations.

Bingo. The "bloated bureaucracy" argument is often used by people who claim that we haven't gone beyond LEO because of NASA incompetence, lack of imagination, etc. If we just privatized everything it would all be better and cheaper. Please. Launching humans into space is really, really hard and the reason NASA hasn't accomplished anything in the past few decades is a lack of resources. The building of the International Space Spation was an amazing engineering achievement. Unfortunately the ISS itself is a useless white elephant.

As for the O-rings, the failure was in the private sector, where the contractor dismissed NASA safety regulations an offered up the O-Ring knowing that there were desgn flaws. As for NASA, to launch go ahead was only given because the order bypassed the shuttle managers who would have stopped the launch because they knew that the risks were, while upper management was not informed of the O-ring issue, again because the contractor had no contacted them about it.

I think your history is incorrect there. Thiokol was begging NASA not to launch the Challenger on the day she blew up. Columbia was a total NASA management screw up, as Brovane pointed out they nearly lost STS-27 because of similar issues and problems with the thermal tiles went all the way back to STS-1. The number of flights that came very close to ending in catastrophe (STS-9 comes to mind) is crazy.

 

[ichy]

Is that still true to this day? Why do solid fuels give more thrust per lb? Thanks for satisfying my nerdy curiosity btw.

I'm not 100% certain about this but I think that liquid H2 provides the best thrust to fuel weight ratio. Unfortunately it takes up a lot of volume which is why it was often used for upper stages rather than first stages. Liquid H2 is also REALLY cold and very hard to work with.

 

[NikolaeVarius]

Solid rocket boosters provide more thrust per lb and don't have the refrigeration requirements that liquid fuel has. When designing the space shuttle they needed to get the payload higher for Pentagon for satellite deployment so they opted for solid rocket boosters that allowed the higher payloads. Several un-manned rockets that launch satellites use strap-on solid boosters for exactly this purpose.

What? No. Lies. All of it.

Liquid Rockets have a much higher specific impulse than solid rockets. Solid rockets are limited by the burn speed of the propellant, and even in the best cases involving the most advanced propellant technologies, these numbers are pretty low, resulting in low nozzle exit velocities, and therefore less thrust. Also, the more advanced propellant and fuel mixtures are actually pretty damn difficult to manufacture because the performance depends exclusively on geometery/density/lack of any flaws whatsoever, of the fuel. Your manufacturing has to be perfect or you're going to have a bad time.


Liquids main drawbacks are simply that its more complex to create a liquid fuel engine than to create a solid fuel engine.

Solid fuel rockets were used on the shuttle program because it was less complex and therefore less expensive. There was a massive amount of debate surrounding what launch system the shuttle wanted to use. Nasa wanted to use liquid propellant exclusively due to its much higher performance and the fact that if something went wrong, it was much easier to abort, but finally opted to solid rocket boosters due to the fact that it was cheaper and would more or less do what NASA wanted to do. They just REALLY REALLY hoped nothing would go wrong.

NASA doesn't have an unlimited budget, it still went with the lowest bidder that had parts that could meet their minimum specifications. Liquid rockets HAD to be involved in some way due to the fact that they needed some sort of main engine to handle parts of liftoff and provide thrust in orbit, but solid rockets were cheap.

 

[ichy]

Why we cannot go back to the moon right now is we lack a heavy lift vehicle to get into orbit. You basically take the lift capability of a rocket and take 35-40% of that and that is what you can put into TLI which is trans lunar injection. This is just a rough number and isn't exact but it is accurate enough for this discussion. When NASA/Congress/Nixon administration stopped Saturn V production in the 60's and then shutdown the production line in 1972 we lost this capability.

There have been discussions of using fuel depots etc to build a vehicle in orbit however the storage of liquid Oxygen and Hydrogen in orbit has it's own challenges. The shuttle could get around 53,000lb into LEO and the Saturn V could put around 260,000lb into LEO. The falcon 9 heavy if Space X can get it to fly in the next year or so will be able to put 120,000lb into LEO which is still less than 1/2 what the Saturn V could do. When you look at Heavy Launch systems on the USSR Energia system which could put around 220,000lb into LEO came close and it only flew once and has been retired. The next rocket down on the list is the Falcon 9 Heavy and it hasn't even flown yet. The current heavy lift champion is the Delta IV Heavy which can do around 50,000lb into LEO. There is really nothing else that even has come close to the Saturn V for its capability to put tonnage into orbit. We(the US) literally through this production capability away. Which is why since 12/72 when Apollo 17 returned no humans have been outside low earth orbit since.

I'm not trying to be argumentative here but there are a lot of people who've said that we could make it past LEO without a new heavy lift rocket. Everyone would love to build a new Saturn V, but with the current fiscal realities NASA night be better off squeezing as much performance as they can out the Delta IV or Atlas V and using on-orbit assembly. Heavy lift would be ideal, but the money to build a new rocket and then actually launch missions with it may not be there.

 

[Darwin333]

Why we cannot go back to the moon right now is we lack a heavy lift vehicle to get into orbit. You basically take the lift capability of a rocket and take 35-40% of that and that is what you can put into TLI which is trans lunar injection. This is just a rough number and isn't exact but it is accurate enough for this discussion. When NASA/Congress/Nixon administration stopped Saturn V production in the 60's and then shutdown the production line in 1972 we lost this capability.

There have been discussions of using fuel depots etc to build a vehicle in orbit however the storage of liquid Oxygen and Hydrogen in orbit has it's own challenges. The shuttle could get around 53,000lb into LEO and the Saturn V could put around 260,000lb into LEO. The falcon 9 heavy if Space X can get it to fly in the next year or so will be able to put 120,000lb into LEO which is still less than 1/2 what the Saturn V could do. When you look at Heavy Launch systems on the USSR Energia system which could put around 220,000lb into LEO came close and it only flew once and has been retired. The next rocket down on the list is the Falcon 9 Heavy and it hasn't even flown yet. The current heavy lift champion is the Delta IV Heavy which can do around 50,000lb into LEO. There is really nothing else that even has come close to the Saturn V for its capability to put tonnage into orbit. We(the US) literally through this production capability away. Which is why since 12/72 when Apollo 17 returned no humans have been outside low earth orbit since.

Thanks for the rundown on our capabilities, but my question was more along the lines of:

It took us 10 years in the 60s to go from not knowing a thing about rockets or space to the Saturn V and getting men out of LEO and onto the moon. NASA started building the Saturn V in 1962 and by 1967 it was in operation. 1968 it had its first manned flight which orbited the moon and in 1969 it launched Apollo 11. So from announcing plans to build the Saturn V to actually using it to put men on the moon took 7 years, again back in the 60's.

Today, we have vastly superior materials, technologies, knowledge, manufacturing capabilities, etc.... and its going to take over 10 years (assuming no set backs which is a fat chance) just to build a vehicle and get back to LEO. Granted the vehicle is supposed to have the ability to get us well beyond LEO but 50 years ago it took us less time to build the vehicle from scratch, with no experience at all, AND get men to the moon.

 

[ichy]

Today, we have vastly superior materials, technologies, knowledge, manufacturing capabilities, etc.... and its going to take over 10 years (assuming no set backs which is a fat chance) just to build a vehicle and get back to LEO. Granted the vehicle is supposed to have the ability to get us well beyond LEO but 50 years ago it took us less time to build the vehicle from scratch, with no experience at all, AND get men to the moon.

NASA had a much bigger budget for Apollo. It all goes back to money.

 

[Darwin333]

I'm not trying to be argumentative here but there are a lot of people who've said that we could make it past LEO without a new heavy lift rocket. Everyone would love to build a new Saturn V, but with the current fiscal realities NASA night be better off squeezing as much performance as they can out the Delta IV or Atlas V and using on-orbit assembly. Heavy lift would be ideal, but the money to build a new rocket and then actually launch missions with it may not be there.

The sad part is NASAs budget isn't even a friggen rounding error in our budget. We could double their yearly budget and not even notice the impact to the overall Federal budget.

The biggest problem I see with NASA is its mission. It can and often does change as politicians do, which wastes not only time but tons of resources.

 

[ichy]

The biggest problem I see with NASA is its mission. It can and often does change as politicians do, which wastes not only time but tons of resources.

Bingo. "We're going back to the moon. No wait, we're going to Mars. No, too expensive, we're going to explore asteroids. Uh oh, the JWST is billions of dollars over budget. Gut everything else to keep it alive!"

 

[NikolaeVarius]

Thanks for the rundown on our capabilities, but my question was more along the lines of:

It took us 10 years in the 60s to go from not knowing a thing about rockets or space to the Saturn V and getting men out of LEO and onto the moon. NASA started building the Saturn V in 1962 and by 1967 it was in operation. 1968 it had its first manned flight which orbited the moon and in 1969 it launched Apollo 11. So from announcing plans to build the Saturn V to actually using it to put men on the moon took 7 years, again back in the 60's.

Today, we have vastly superior materials, technologies, knowledge, manufacturing capabilities, etc.... and its going to take over 10 years (assuming no set backs which is a fat chance) just to build a vehicle and get back to LEO. Granted the vehicle is supposed to have the ability to get us well beyond LEO but 50 years ago it took us less time to build the vehicle from scratch, with no experience at all, AND get men to the moon.

The Saturn 5 had a SINGLE mission. Get men and equipment to the moon.

Any future launch vehicle may or may not need to

1) Only get equipment into orbit
2) Get large scale structures into orbit
3) Possibly go past LEO and to the moon/mars
4) Other possible things.

These are VASTLY different engineering objectives and there is almost no chance that a single design can encompass all these objectives.

 

[ichy]

The Saturn V did a pretty good job of hauling Skylab into LEO as well. It could have had a lot of other uses if the money had been there.

 

[Brovane]

What? No. Lies. All of it.

Liquid Rockets have a much higher specific impulse than solid rockets. Solid rockets are limited by the burn speed of the propellant, and even in the best cases involving the most advanced propellant technologies, these numbers are pretty low, resulting in low nozzle exit velocities, and therefore less thrust. Also, the more advanced propellant and fuel mixtures are actually pretty damn difficult to manufacture because the performance depends exclusively on geometery/density/lack of any flaws whatsoever, of the fuel. Your manufacturing has to be perfect or you're going to have a bad time.


Liquids main drawbacks are simply that its more complex to create a liquid fuel engine than to create a solid fuel engine.

Solid fuel rockets were used on the shuttle program because it was less complex and therefore less expensive. There was a massive amount of debate surrounding what launch system the shuttle wanted to use. Nasa wanted to use liquid propellant exclusively due to its much higher performance and the fact that if something went wrong, it was much easier to abort, but finally opted to solid rocket boosters due to the fact that it was cheaper and would more or less do what NASA wanted to do. They just REALLY REALLY hoped nothing would go wrong.

NASA doesn't have an unlimited budget, it still went with the lowest bidder that had parts that could meet their minimum specifications. Liquid rockets HAD to be involved in some way due to the fact that they needed some sort of main engine to handle parts of liftoff and provide thrust in orbit, but solid rockets were cheap.

I was just going off what wiki was saying about solid fuel rockets.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid_rocket_booster

I just don't know enough to say who is correct.

 

[Brovane]

The Saturn 5 had a SINGLE mission. Get men and equipment to the moon.

Any future launch vehicle may or may not need to

1) Only get equipment into orbit
2) Get large scale structures into orbit
3) Possibly go past LEO and to the moon/mars
4) Other possible things.

These are VASTLY different engineering objectives and there is almost no chance that a single design can encompass all these objectives.

Certainly the Saturn V can put equipment into orbit. They also had the derivative which was the Saturn 1B which could be easily used to get equipment into orbit at a cheaper launch cost than the Saturn V. They did have a interesting concept for a Saturn V reusable launcher to get equipment, astronauts into orbit. It was stage 1 1/2 concept. The Saturn V-B concept using just the first stage to put 22 tons into LEO. Four of the 5 engines would jets ion and be recoverable. There is interesting report on the different Saturn Vehicles and concepts - http://www.astronautix.com/data/satvint.pdf

 

[ichy]

I was just going off what wiki was saying about solid fuel rockets.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid_rocket_booster

I just don't know enough to say who is correct.

Check wiki's article on specific impulse. SRBs are much less efficient than Liquid O2/H2 engines. I think that O2/kerosene engines also beat SRBs. No idea how they compare to hypergolics.

I think what they meant by "greater thrust" is that it's easier and simpler to make a relatively large SRB than it is to make a huge liquid fuel engine.

 

[ichy]

Certainly the Saturn V can put equipment into orbit. They also had the derivative which was the Saturn 1B which could be easily used to get equipment into orbit at a cheaper launch cost than the Saturn V.

The Saturn 1B wasn't really a Saturn V derivative. The S-1B used the same instrument unit as the S-V and the S-V's third stage was the same as the S-1B's second stage, but the first stage was completely different.

The Saturn 1B was also not a cheap rocket to fly. The Air Force considered using it for the MOL project but ended up using the Titan III because it was much less pricey. If the US had continued using Apollo hardware a simpler, cheaper Saturn 1B equivalent would have probably been a priority.

 

[Brovane]

Check wiki's article on specific impulse. SRBs are much less efficient than Liquid O2/H2 engines. I think that O2/kerosene engines also beat SRBs. No idea how they compare to hypergolics.

I think what they meant by "greater thrust" is that it's easier and simpler to make a relatively large SRB than it is to make a huge liquid fuel engine.

That might be it. Each SRB could deliver 2.8 million pounds of thrust at sea level which is considerably more than a single F1 engine on a saturn V. They needed something that was cheap to develop and could do a lot of thrust. So it was a solid rocket booster.

 

[Brovane]

The Saturn 1B wasn't really a Saturn V derivative. The S-1B used the same instrument unit as the S-V and the S-V's third stage was the same as the S-1B's second stage, but the first stage was completely different.

The Saturn 1B was also not a cheap rocket to fly. The Air Force considered using it for the MOL project but ended up using the Titan III because it was much less pricey. If the US had continued using Apollo hardware a simpler, cheaper Saturn 1B equivalent would have probably been a priority.

I think the Saturn V-B concept using Apollo hardware would have been interesting because it offered a lot of re usability for a short development cycle. However from what I read the Nixon Administration wanted to go a new direction in space. They did see the Moon as a Democract thing and NASA was happy to oblige them by offering up the possibility of a shuttle which never was able to function how it was initially sold as. So they essentially threw away a lot of the Apollo technology and we have been stuck in LEO since then.

 

[Brovane]

I'm not trying to be argumentative here but there are a lot of people who've said that we could make it past LEO without a new heavy lift rocket. Everyone would love to build a new Saturn V, but with the current fiscal realities NASA night be better off squeezing as much performance as they can out the Delta IV or Atlas V and using on-orbit assembly. Heavy lift would be ideal, but the money to build a new rocket and then actually launch missions with it may not be there.

You are correct. What those people propose is using Fuel Depots. However there is some new technology that needs to be figured out since essentially you would have to store fuel in orbit and figure out how to do fuel transfers in vacumn. I think the Falcon 9 Heavy could easily fit this bill because it can launch a fairly useful payload for a low price. Instead we have the SLS program which Congress mandated that it use shuttle components to the entire program was turned into a single source bid. I have no doubt that this program will far exceed 15 billion dollars. Even then I think NASA could get a new super heavy lift rocket 130+ ton capacity if they went with a fixed price contract.

How about NASA puts this out there for bids, NASA needs a Heavy Lift vehicle that can put 130 metric tons into LEO. The total fixed price contract will be $10 billion dollars to deliver a working rocket. Further purchases of the rocket will be at a fixed cost of say $400 Million in 2012 dollars. We don't care what tech you use as long as the rocket is safe and can put required tonnage into LEO. You get 1/3 up front on successful selection of your bid. You get the balance after the first prototype rocket flies and successful demonstrates performance. The balance of the money will be held in a 3rd party escrow account until delivery. The delivery time will be 8-years from the awarding of the contract. Put that out there and watch all the established Aero Space companies cry and whine about how unfair this is. Then Space X comes along and puts in a bid for $9 Billion to develop the rocket.

 

[Paratus]

Solids generally have better thrust to weight ratios than liquids do. Liquids are however more efficient.

As an example the SRBs had an Isp of 270 and produced 3,100,000 lbs if thrust. While the shuttle Main Engines were up around 450 and only produced 512,000 lbs of thrust.

 

[ichy]

I think the Falcon 9 Heavy could easily fit this bill because it can launch a fairly useful payload for a low price.

The Falcon 9 Heavy can do it on paper. The thing has never actually flown and some of the technology that it'll rely on (fuel cross-feed comes to mind) is far from proven. SpaceX has done an impressive job so far but let's remember to take some of their more grandiose promises with a grain of salt.

If it were up to me we'd dust off the design for the F-1A engine (Rocketdyne did a very thorough job of documenting how the thing was built, going to far as to tape record interviews with engineers who built it) and build a new Saturn V. Of course while I'm dreaming I'd also like a pony.

 

[ichy]

Solids generally have better thrust to weight ratios than liquids do. Liquids are however more efficient.

Huh? More efficient seems synonymous with better thrust to weight ratio.

 

[Paratus]

Not really.

The grand champions in efficiency are electric engines like Ion or VASIMR which can have Specific Impulses in the 3000-30,000 range. The problem is they produce thrust in the millinewton range. Not enough for a launch but great for in-space use.

So in this case efficiency relates to final exhaust speed. With a solid I can throw huge amounts fuel slowly out the nozzle for a large amount of thrust. With a liquid rocket I can throw a large amount of fuel faster than a solid rocket. And with an Ion engine I can throw a tiny amount of fuel extremely fast.

For example:
SRB: exhaust velocity of 2,500 m/s
SME: 4,400 m/s
VASIMR: upto 120,000 m/s

A fully loaded shuttle external tank weighs 1,680,000lbs at liftoff. The three SME only produce 1,500,000 lbs of thrust. This doesn't include the weight of the shuttle


The SRBs each weigh 1,300,000 lbs and produce 3,100,000 lbs of thrust.

Basically you have to pick the right engine for the job.

 

[Brovane]

The Falcon 9 Heavy can do it on paper. The thing has never actually flown and some of the technology that it'll rely on (fuel cross-feed comes to mind) is far from proven. SpaceX has done an impressive job so far but let's remember to take some of their more grandiose promises with a grain of salt.

If it were up to me we'd dust off the design for the F-1A engine (Rocketdyne did a very thorough job of documenting how the thing was built, going to far as to tape record interviews with engineers who built it) and build a new Saturn V. Of course while I'm dreaming I'd also like a pony.

You are correct. However the Falcon 9 heavy is essentially 3 1st stage Falcon 9's together. The Falcon 9 Heavy however will probably have it's first flight either late in 2013 or early 2014 and they already have a commercial customer lined up. If Space X can follow through all their claims. However so far Space X has been able to deliver. I just see it as a potential quick way to get NASA back into the manned space business beyond LEO. The SLS is at least 5+ years off.

 

[ichy]

I really want to believe that SpaceX can do everything they're promising for the price that they're promising. I just refuse to get my hopes up until something flies. They were right about the Falcon 9/Dragon, now let's see how they handle a manned Dragon and the Falcon 9 Heavy.