this post was submitted on 20 Nov 2024
187 points (97.0% liked)

News

23397 readers
4238 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.


Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.


7. No duplicate posts.


If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners.


The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] partial_accumen@lemmy.world 4 points 6 days ago (1 children)

First, musk is an ass. No defense of him.

Spaceflight, however, is awesome.

I’m a space systems propulsion design engineer by profession. I worked on a project which I will not name that requires on-orbit refuelling. (It’s not this one and I don’t and will never work for Elon Musk).

I'm just an enthusiast so I trust your professional opinion more than my own knowledge.

The technology for in-orbit refuelling doesn’t exist, and there’s a whole lot of new technology required.

I'm assuming your referring to the SpaceX on-orbit refueling of cryogenic propellants requirement, which I agree hasn't happened yet in history by anyone. However, there is a regular on-orbit refueling of cryogenic propellants for years on a regular basis with Progress spacecraft refueling the 400 liters worth of tanks (860kg of hydrazine) on the ISS for its orbit raising rocket engine located on the Zvezda module of the ISS. Cryogenic propellants would be a whole different animal however.

I’m sceptical that they do have current solutions which are feasible and useful, rather than something like a one-shot refueling subsystem that weighs 250kg and delivers 15 litres of hydrazine.

As this technology is in regular use in space today, I don't doubt SpaceX could do this, but we agree this doesn't accomplish anything close to what is needed for the lunar mission SpaceX signed up for.

[–] crapwittyname@lemm.ee 1 points 5 days ago

Don't forget ESA's ATV and the NASA RRM for refuelling the ISS. As was the case with launchers for a while, the Europeans and the Americans have beautiful, expensive and awesome solutions, while the Russians just get the job done (often by waiving safety standards)

Anyway, the ISS is a different beast, it's in LEO and it didn't need to be launched in one go, so you can send up heavy equipment and integrate it on-orbit, activities which require Gantt charts so autistic that my eyes bleed when I think about them. Starship-to-Starship refuelling would mean sending a single spacecraft up with all the necessary equipment to do propellant transfer, which is what I was thinking of when I wrote my comment, as you say.