SpaceX FH - Psyche - LC-39A

[scaesare]

With expendable chemical rockets, you may not explore the solar system. It's not a physical reality, but a practical one.

The lead-in was "It essentially says that you may not have". I was hoping that my phrasing would communicate the idea that we can't do much until we make it economical to loft propellant. The need for large amounts of propellant is the iron fist of the rocket equation, and until propellant becomes more easily available, we're not going anywhere. Propellant depots in various locations would make the solar system more accessible. But we always have to acknowledge the rocket equation.

Another big development is the ability to make propellant from the atmosphere on Mars - because it caters to the rocket equation. If successfully implemented, you don't have to take the fuel to return. The rocket equation is merciless on that score because return propellant is outgoing cargo, requiring that much more propellant to get to your destination.

@ecarfan mentioned fusion drives, which would be a real slap in the face to the rocket equation. Just don't point your fusion drive at anything that you want to keep.

To bring this back around to asteroid mining, if you want to mine asteroids, you're going to have to have propellant out in the asteroid belt. That means a low delta-v depot relative to the asteroid you're after. So perhaps Ceres, Vesta or Pallas would have enough ices in them to provide that propellant while being a low enough delta-v from a target like Psyche to make it accessible. Or perhaps there are other, smaller, icy bodies that would be usable.

There are various delta-v maps of the solar system, but I couldn't find one that included the asteroids so I don't know how practical it would be to fly to Ceres, refuel, fly to Psyche, mine, fly to Ceres, refuel, then fly the mined materials wherever they go.

OK, gotcha.., I initially understood you to be somehow tying the RE and reusability together, but understand what you were getting at now.

Yeah, it is rather unforgiving... getting off planet is barely possible as it is. Much less packing up everything you need for an encampment and heading off to Mars...

 

[JB47394]

I would respectfully point out that much of your post would be more on topic in this thread https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/mars-and-off-planet-colonization-pros-and-cons-discussion.308156/

I'm not sure it's possible to talk about asteroid mining without a larger context. What is asteroid mining for, and how do you get to the materials in an economically-viable way? Said another way, what economic system calls for taking materials from asteroids? It would be one that acknowledges the realities of space flight, as well as the realities of material distribution. Why go and get platinum from Psyche when we have platinum at home? Certainly we don't need to get iron, nickel or magnesium from asteroids. Unless there is unobtanium out there, there's no reason to go and take anything from them. Ultimately, the only reason I can think of to mine the asteroids is if you want to build something out among the asteroids because the delta-v cost is so low. Something like an O'Neill cylinder.

 

[Grendal]

 

[Grendal]

Weather is bad - only 20% favorable for tomorrow.

Weather 20% Favorable for Thursday’s Psyche Launch – Psyche Mission

blogs.nasa.gov

 

[Grendal]

 

[Grendal]

24 hour delay. 60% chance of favorable weather tomorrow.

 

[GWord]

Launch was a go. Made it to the first coast orbit. I'm always nervous for these kinds of do-or-die payloads.

 

[HVM]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1712852971351060784

https://twitter.com/x/status/1712858296128823702

Separation confirmed! The @SpaceX rocket has demonstrated its ability to withstand the extreme conditions of launch.

Carrier signal acquired. This is the first indicator that we're communicating with the spacecraft – but we're still waiting to receive full telemetry to confirm #MissionToPsyche is in good health. This is expected to come in the next 2 hours.

 

[JB47394]

For the curious, yes, the two side boosters returned to the Cape successfully. Their landings were staggered by about 10 seconds, so it wasn't as dramatic as the near-simultaneous landing from the first launch, but still very cool to watch. There was a bucketload of sonic booms off each booster.

I'm thinking about the six year mission timeline to reach Psyche and I wonder where SpaceX will be six years from now (August 2029). Starship should be launching regularly and may even be man-rated by then. Falcon 9 had its first launch in 2010 and its first manned launch in 2020. Let's hope we're not waiting until 2034 for the first manned Starship flight. Perhaps obviously, I'm ignoring NASA's 2025 Artemis 3 date.

 

[Grendal]

Really spectacular launch. SpaceX is now doing staggered landings on the two boosters. I'm sure there is a good reason for it. My guess is that they want to avoid the atmospheric interaction effects between the boosters.

 

[HVM]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1712862750806868053

We've successfully acquired the spacecraft's full signal. Initial telemetry reports show #MissionToPsyche in good health and will now journey 2.2 billion miles to a metal-rich world.

 

[Grendal]

 

[ecarfan]

Happy to see a successful start to this amazing mission!

The NSF livestream was pretty poor, and the commentators pretty clueless. At one point one of them stated that MaxQ was about to occur but in fact it had already happened and just a couple of seconds after that erroneous statement the side boosters separated.

So instead I watched the Angry Astronaut stream of the NASA webcast. As usual the NASA commentators were also pretty poor. When the fairings separated one of the commentators said that the spacecraft was “exposed to the atmosphere” but of course at that altitude there was no atmosphere that could have any significant effect on the vehicle. And there was no vehicle telemetry onscreen. Also, the NASA tracking camera images were shaky and blurry.

I miss the SpaceX web hosts.

 

[ICUDoc]

I just LOVE a good FH launch.
The delay in the second booster landing had me a TINY bit anxious, but it it's bloody nearly routine for Spacex these days.
Onward, Psyche!
(Six years is a long wait, though...)

 

[ICUDoc]

I miss the SpaceX web hosts.

Yup. NASA feed and commentary surprisingly amateurish.

 

[Grendal]

I miss the SpaceX web hosts.

I couldn't agree more. I sure hope they have John Insprucker do the next Starship launch. He did the last one and he is so great.

 

[Electroman]

As usual the NASA commentators were also pretty poor. When the fairings separated one of the commentators said that the spacecraft was “exposed to the atmosphere” but of course at that altitude there was no atmosphere that could have any significant effect on the vehicle. And there was no vehicle telemetry onscreen. Also, the NASA tracking camera images were shaky and blurry.

They also said erroneously each booster will have two re-entry burns and one landing burn.

Nope. It will be three burns all right, but that will be, boost back burn, reentry burn and landing burn.

 

[ecarfan]

Another great video from Scott. But he says something odd; the onboard imaging resolution will be “about 3 feet or 10 meters in the lowest orbits”. What? I listened to that three times to make sure I was hearing him correctly. Maybe he intended to say “30 feet”.

 

[JB47394]

Another great video from Scott. But he says something odd; the onboard imaging resolution will be “about 3 feet or 10 meters in the lowest orbits”. What? I listened to that three times to make sure I was hearing him correctly. Maybe he intended to say “30 feet”.

I assume that he swapped his units, meaning to say "3 meters or 10 feet". I found a paper online detailing the camera and it said that its performance should provide spatial resolution of 10 meters per pixel at 200km. Spatial resolution is proportionate to distance, so at the lowest orbit of 75km, that gives a spatial resolution of 3.75 meters or 12 feet.

An alternate explanation is that he really did mean "30 feet or 10 meters" and he was quoting that same paper. It may be that they will only image from 200km away and that the lower orbits are intended for other experiments (e.g. the magnetometers). I have no idea which is true.

Here's an interesting page for anyone curious about some basic numbers on satellite imagery. The highest resolution commercial images come from Maxar's WorldView 3 satellite. It orbits at 617km and can provide panchromatic (black and white) images down to 31cm resolution. Color images down to 124cm resolution. That's not something that a Starlink could carry given that the imaging satellite masses 2800kg.

Put that on Psyche and at 75km it could provide color imagery at 15cm resolution. Interestingly, Psyche masses about the same as WorldView 3.

 

[scaesare]

I couldn't agree more. I sure hope they have John Insprucker do the next Starship launch. He did the last one and he is so great.

I couldn't watch live, and just watched the re-play on Everyday Astronaut.... although I'm skipping thru it some, I also happened to catch Tim chuckling over and correcting errors, like their referring to the fairing falling through the atmosphere right after separation...