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An astronaut explains how it'd feel to ride Elon Musk's giant spaceship

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P100D launches at a max of about 1.4g. Lots of people find that uncomfortable. A launch at twice that level is going to make a lot of people uncomfortable. Some will surely be willing to deal with it, but I think a great many others will prefer to spend a lot longer but sleeping in a bed on a normal plane.

Course it all comes down to cost in the end.

That's true for all forms of transportation. Some prefer driving a car across the country over taking a plane. My preference is always planes for anything more than 300 miles. For this to be successful, SpaceX needs to get 100,000 people around the world to be willing to try it. I expect it will end up more expensive than Elon figures but plenty of people are willing to pay a hefty premium for saving time.
 
The wavyness signature of that graph suggesting some kind of pulsing nature of the engines every few seconds is puzzling.

Also the 3.5G to near zero in about a second will not be fun for most people at MECO.

1. That is likely an inaccuracy, watch a launch and you'll never see the exhaust trail pulsing.

2. Regarding MECO. The cargo doesn't care about an abrupt change of thrust. I'm sure they'll be more graceful about it for passenger flights. Minimum thrust is about 20% of one engine but if there are dozens of engines they can turn off groups at a time to phase out thrust.
 
The wavyness signature of that graph suggesting some kind of pulsing nature of the engines every few seconds is puzzling.

Also the 3.5G to near zero in about a second will not be fun for most people at MECO.

Also surprising that 2nd stage pulls far less Gs than first stage.

if you look at the Soyuz curve in the other quora link I posted earlier, it also looks like a pretty dramatic ride, as does the Saturn V for that matter especially immediately after S-IC cutoff, dropping suddenly from 4G

and with the Saturn V launches, the 2nd stage also had much lower Gs/more gradual increase in acceleration compared to 1st stage, even though the S-II was still a pretty big beast (5 engines/1M lbs thrust)

Maybe the wavy curve is because this was created by calculating all of this from time and speed displayed on the SpaceX Webcast during launch.
agreed, the guy who did the calculation/plot said the same. probably safe to draw a smooth line through those ripples.
 
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I’ve seen this launch acceleration profile a few different places showing the Space Shuttle acceleration during launch was between 2-3Gs - (throttled back before MECO to stay below 3G design limit). Note also the smooth gradual increase in acceleration after SRB sep (point D) to max G

View attachment 253621
I recall astronauts’ describing their experience saying things about the violent vibrations during SRB burn and being like a kick in the seat of the pants at ignition. From the same source above there’s a note:

Re: vibration, all accounts say that the vibration from the SRBs was significant enough to make it challenging to focus on the instruments. After SRB sep the ride was much smoother.

By comparison the G-forces for Apollo/Saturn V or Soyuz launches seem higher, about 4G: https://www.quora.com/What-does-the-typical-acceleration-profile-experienced-by-an-astronaut-look-like

while we’re at it, I found this chart where someone calculated and then plotted the launch acceleration profile for a Falcon 9, based on the time and velocity readings shown on a SpaceX launch video from 2016


View attachment 253698

Regarding MECO. The cargo doesn't care about an abrupt change of thrust. I'm sure they'll be more graceful about it for passenger flights. Minimum thrust is about 20% of one engine but if there are dozens of engines they can turn off groups at a time to phase out thrust.
And that will be important. As you see above, the Shuttle avoids massive G variations because the Shuttle's main engines are firing all along, through SRB separation.
The Falcon does not have anything keep thrust going at stage separation, creating a similar profile as the Soyouz (big drops between stages).
 
PSA - Elon just tweeted he'll be doing a Reddit AMA on BFR in a couple hours
Screen Shot 2017-10-14 at 11.27.31 AM.jpg

Elon Musk on Twitter
 
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The Falcon does not have anything keep thrust going at stage separation, creating a similar profile as the Soyouz (big drops between stages).

It's only a big drop if they choose for it to be a big drop. Keep the engines at 100% throttle then cut them off prior to separation and you have a big drop. If you instead throttle down from 100% to 99% to 98%, etc all the way to 20% then cut them off the drop is less.

Going one step further if you have dozens of engines you throttle down from 100% to 20% on all of them then start disabling them in sets (pairs, sets of 3, sets of 4, whatever make since due to symmetry). That allows you to have less than 20% of all engine thrust without having any single engine between 0% and 20% as the engines have a minimum throttle limit.

With the latest version stage 1 has 31 engines. With 1 on and 30 off your minimum thrust is ~0.00645 of the maximum thrust. I'd say that allows them to scale down the throttle from 100 to 20% with all engines and then work on disabling engines to go from effective 20% to effective ~0.645% in pretty small chunks. Each minimum chunk will be a multiple of ~0.645% depending on symmetry. The chunks could be ~1.29% if done in pairs, or ~1.935% if done in sets of three.

Looking at Soyouz where they were flying at the edge of capability and assuming that means limits for BFR where they can throttle things back for passenger service is wrong in my opinion. You have some gravity losses by not running at full throttle near MECO but nothing earth shattering if you want to make the ride more comfortable.

Put another way you are saying the equivalent of saying that guy over there drives 90 mph until he sees the stop sign and then slams the brakes. There is no way you can make a car or bus that can comfortably approach a stop sign because that guy didn't do it that way.
 
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Just reading Elon's responses, one gets the impression that SpaceX is about to continue writing new chapters in the rocketry rulebook. Just for starters, they've developed a new high strength metal alloy to use for oxygen pumps that won't burn at temperature. How about that BSF? Minus the booster, it's designed as a single stage rocket for an easy launch off of Mars. However, with a minimal payload, it could also reach LEO without the booster? As far as I know, up to now I don't think a single stage rocket has every been developed capable of that kind of performance. Incredible stuff!
 
Just reading Elon's responses, one gets the impression that SpaceX is about to continue writing new chapters in the rocketry rulebook. Just for starters, they've developed a new high strength metal alloy to use for oxygen pumps that won't burn at temperature. How about that BSF? Minus the booster, it's designed as a single stage rocket for an easy launch off of Mars. However, with a minimal payload, it could also reach LEO without the booster? As far as I know, up to now I don't think a single stage rocket has every been developed capable of that kind of performance. Incredible stuff!

Nice spot. The implications of a SSTO (Single Stage To Orbit) hadn't occurred to me when I was reading Elon's comments. That is huge. Granted he basically said it would need to be close to empty to do it, but no one has ever done it realistically before. The fact that it can do it at all is amazing and shows how impressive their new engine and design will be. If he thinks it would work at the early design then I can't even imagine what it will be able to accomplish after they have improved the design.
 
A single stage makes a lot of sense for passenger transport where you do a hop from somewhere to anywhere
Not possible with the BFS if it has any useful payload, only when near empty. Elon stated today that it will be done on early test flights, but later test flights will be in BFR configuration.
 
agreed, the guy who did the calculation/plot said the same. probably safe to draw a smooth line through those ripples.

Funnily enough, the Tesla Roadster Wh/mi calculator on the info display has the same problem. For the first few miles of a roadtrip it bounces up then down then up then down, eventually (after ~10mi) converging on a stable value. It's caused by rounding/quantizing the values for watt-hours and miles before dividing. In the case of this graph, it's pretty sure it's due to quantizing the speed before calculating the acceleration.
 
Just reading Elon's responses, one gets the impression that SpaceX is about to continue writing new chapters in the rocketry rulebook. Just for starters, they've developed a new high strength metal alloy to use for oxygen pumps that won't burn at temperature. How about that BSF? Minus the booster, it's designed as a single stage rocket for an easy launch off of Mars. However, with a minimal payload, it could also reach LEO without the booster? As far as I know, up to now I don't think a single stage rocket has every been developed capable of that kind of performance. Incredible stuff!

According to Elon, the Falcon 9 first stage is also capable of reaching LEO by itself (barely) if it's not pushing a second stage. I've always wished Elon would do this with one of the pre-flown boosters, if only as a test/demonstration.
 
Great stuff there. Cannot help but feel that this is definitely what an astronaut expects, and is used to. A "normal" might describe this in different terms. Can't feel the launch? Hmm, ok.
Who here has felt 5 Gs? :)
I have, doing aerobatics.
It’s pretty bloody rough to be honest. A few seconds is OK, but you’d have to be in reasonable physical condition (Ie normal health).
 
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I very rarely post, but for once I know enough about a subject to contribute something. So, a few points:

1. At least a couple of people have mentioned this already, but the point seems to have been lost in all the comments: A 3G force, or even 5Gs, isn't going to be all that stressful for someone lying on a padded couch with his feet, his heart, and his head all at the same level. I found it surprising when I learned that astronauts can raise their arms to toggle switches over their heads at 5 G's. The tunnel vision, blackouts, and other stresses experience by pilots doing airplane acrobatics are due to blood pooling in the legs, draining blood out of the head and brain. Even in a Tesla car, we're are not lying flat when we experience much milder G-forces.

I would expect the pre-flight medical checkup procedure for BFR passengers would be similar to what Virgin Galactic has been talking about for its planned suborbital flights. That is, you'd basically need a note from your doctor saying you had been given a general checkup and were okay for some mild physical stress. BFG passengers are not going to need the kind of training that astronauts go through!

2. Solid fuel rockets have a significantly rougher "ride", and a lot more vibration, than liquid fuel rockets, because the solid fuel doesn't burn evenly. It goes in fits and starts.

3. There is no good reason for passengers (or astronauts) to ever experience much over 1 G at launch. A higher G force means the rocket is carrying more fuel than it needs, which means it weighs more than it needs to, which means it needs even more fuel... That's getting on the wrong side of the rocket equation, which is already a very high bar for large rockets to overcome, which is why they all have multiple stages. For example, with the Saturn V rocket which carried the Apollo moon launches, the rocket spent half its fuel just lifting the rocket its own height off the ground.

4. I'm guessing that the comment about solid rockets having a higher thrust on takeoff was a reference to small rockets. Small rockets, such as hobby rockets, get a lot of benefit from the cube-square law; the fact that small scale objects are much lighter in proportion to their size than large ones. With proportionally much lighter weight, small rockets can afford to carry a much higher fuel-to-mass ratio, and thus can develop a much higher thrust (and G force) on takeoff. WHOOSH! (For much more info on this subject, see the autobiographical Rocket Boys and the movie "October Sky".)

5. An SSTO (Single Stage To Orbit) system is of course a very attractive goal, but as has already been said, can really be achieved only with nearly zero payload**, which makes such an achievement a stunt rather than anything practical. You'd never make money without carrying a payload or passengers. Achieving a suborbital flight with SSTO should be somewhat easier, since you don't have to go fast enough to achieve orbit, but if I recall what I've read, you still need about 90% of the velocity to get far enough out of the atmosphere on a ballistic suborbital flight, so I doubt a SSTO solution for a suborbital passenger shuttle is much more likely.

**That is, so long as we are restricted to chemical rockets. If we start using nuclear rockets, such as the experimental NERVA nuclear thermal rocket back in the sixties, then we certainly could develop a practical SSTO system. Unfortunately, rockets using nuclear heating to boost exhaust temperature (and thus boost thrust) were outlawed by the nuclear arms treaties which banned atmospheric nuclear weapons tests.
 
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For example, with the Saturn V rocket which carried the Apollo moon launches, the rocket spent half its fuel just lifting the rocket its own height off the ground.

This is off by an order of magnitude. The Saturn V first stage burned fuel at a roughly constant rate (it didn't have to throttle down for max-q, since thrust/weight was fairly low, but the center engine was cut off at T + 130s to limit maximum G forces), and it cleared the tower after about 15 seconds after ignition (roughly 6 seconds hold-down, then ~9 seconds ascending to tower height). Total time to first stage MECO was about 170 seconds. So the first stage burned ~3% of its fuel in hold-down, and an additional ~5% clearing the tower. Nowhere near half.

For the sake of comparison, Saturn V pulled ~1.25G at launch (1G gravity + 0.25G acceleration), while the Shuttle was ~1.7G. BFR appears to be much closer to Saturn V in this regard: ~1.2 thrust/weight with max payload, guessing ~1.3 for E2E applications.
 
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...The Saturn V first stage... burned ~3% of its fuel in hold-down, and an additional ~5% clearing the tower. Nowhere near half.

Ah, thank you for the correction. Obviously it has been too many decades since I read about the Apollo space program!

For the sake of comparison, Saturn V pulled ~1.25G at launch (1G gravity + 0.25G acceleration), while the Shuttle was ~1.7G.

Well no, the Space Shuttle didn't pull that much G force at liftoff, altho from a bit of Googling I see where you likely got that incorrect figure. I suspect the person giving the figure you quoted got that mixed up with the amount of G's pulled (presumably the maximum G-force) when the Shuttle does reentry aerobraking before landing; I see that figure is quoted at 1.7 G's.

Looking at a video of a Shuttle launch, I see it takes about 6 seconds to climb its own height off the ground. Accelerating for 6 seconds at 0.7 G (so that the astronauts would experience 1 G from Earth's gravity plus 0.7 G of acceleration), the vehicle would travel about 132 meters. The height of the Space Shuttle stack on the launch pad is only 56 meters, so obviously the acceleration rate is rather less than 0.7 G.

As I said, there would be no good reason for a manned rocket launch vehicle to accelerate that fast. It would be highly wasteful to equip it to do so. 0.25 G's of acceleration for the Apollo/Saturn V at liftoff sounds about right. Playing around with the acceleration vs distance formula, I get approximately 0.32 G of acceleration for the Space Shuttle in the first 6 seconds after liftoff, which of course means ~1.32 G experienced by the Shuttle astronauts at liftoff.