Going back to the Moon

Peter wrote:

I am not sure. The Musk vertical landing obviously has a huge number of single points of failure. You buy insurance to cover that, so if it fails, it doesn’t matter, so long as nobody gets killed.

The Falcon and Starship boosters can fly with several engines inoperable. The Falcon can’t hover at all (min thrust > mass at landing) but the Starship (orbiter) and the Starship booster should be able to. It seems to me that there will be points close to landing when an engine failure will doom them because there won’t be time to start another engine in time. However they now light more engines than they need to, then cut whichever seems the least dependable to reduce the risk. One of the early Starship failures might have been prevented if they’d implemented this sooner. They’re aiming for airliner levels of safety.

I’ll believe in full reusability when it happens, but in the meanwhile it’s exciting to watch.

An old joke that if the first human flight (Wright brothers) was to happen now, it would not have happened due to Health & Safety.

This is just nonsense with no connection to reality. The Wright brothers plane was an homebuilt UL. The exact same thing can, and is, being done today all over the world.

Manned spaceflight is another game entirely. It costs more than an entire national budget of an average country to do this. I am not talking about suborbital free fall flights.

vic wrote:

It takes years to even land on Mars – no human load transported. Now figure out what it would take to get a few men onto Mars and back, a project taking years.

Actually, they don’t expect to get them back, but to populate the Mars and stay there. At least that is one project.

You may well ask, why explore the universe at all if we are never gonna go there. Or why bother with other “uninteresting” places like the polar regions?

Mankind is curious and that is why it evolves. Some of the satisfied curiosity has little impact on us, but many, particularly the technical advantages achieved due to the needs of space flight, are now every day items. Not least solar energy, which was pioneered on those early spacecraft and becomes very important now. I am quite positive that future projects in space will have similar benefits in advance of technology.

Sorry for being so cruely realistic, this present project is complete BS. I will change my verdict once somebody can tell me in what time scale mankind would be able to reach another galactic. Our planetary system is already vast in human imagination. It takes years to even land on Mars – no human load transported. Now figure out what it would take to get a few men onto Mars and back, a project taking years. I don´t see anything economically usefull to find on next planets, not to speak of planets in other systems. Distances are just so enormous to find people willing to risk a flight there – except somebody can come up with transport near light speed ?? So instead we should better care about other earthly matters like water supply in US and elsewhere, geothermics for power supply and so on. Just this is not so inspiring to some but better spent money benefit for anyone, not just like annual trillions going into Pentagon war industry. Vic

arj1 wrote:

An old joke that if the first human flight (Wright brothers) was to happen now, it would not have happened due to Health & Safety.

The one flight which comes to my mind which would give any regulator in todays age a collective heart attack was Lindbergh’s NYC-PAR flight. No forward vision, MASSIVE overload and FDR’s pulverized.

LeSving wrote:

I have nothing against spaceflights or R&D work for spaceflight. I just don’t see the value of sending people along the ride.

Space exploration without people is like two chess computers playing against each other. It’s just not the same…

Emir wrote:

I’ve seen the certification requirements for the manned and unmanned space flights, and have to say it is a nightmare to put a human on spaceship.

Following that, everybody on this forum could fly drones, it would be so much easier and safer.

@Emir, so true! :)))
An old joke that if the first human flight (Wright brothers) was to happen now, it would not have happened due to Health & Safety.
I think in my mind the spaceflight would be justified if there would be real reason to fly to other planets, otherewise less so.

I’ve seen the certification requirements for the manned and unmanned space flights, and have to say it is a nightmare to put a human on spaceship.

Following that, everybody on this forum could fly drones, it would be so much easier and safer.

LeSving wrote:

I have nothing against spaceflights or R&D work for spaceflight. I just don’t see the value of sending people along the ride.

@LeSving, with you on that – I’ve seen the certification requirements for the manned and unmanned space flights, and have to say it is a nightmare to put a human on spaceship.
If it is an R&D unmanned flight – no problem, if it goes down, well, just some money is lost. Different story with humans.
Yes, we fly because we can, but it adds so many problems to do that…