I think that SpaceX has pretty well proven that tghey can deliver and
yes it is time to have the big engines. We do have to lift a two
container load of goods into space as often as possible. That will
seriously haul the cost per pound down into something almost
reasonable.
Again these engines can also be ganged. I would still like to see a
hydraulic elevator launch platform place inside a mountain that was
able to bring the launch vehicle up to the speed of sound and an
elevation of at least several thousand feet.
That way the engines could hit full thrust and initial launch
velocity before release. A large enough elevator could launch a wide
range of rockets in this manner. Twenty thousand feet would be even
better as it takes the launch itself out of the deep atmosphere. Yet
we have plenty of convenient ten thousand foot mountains able to
handle all this.
SpaceX aims big
with massive new rocket
By: ZACH
ROSENBERG
Launcher
developer SpaceX is designing a new engine for a new
rocket, larger than the Falcon 9 thatNASA expects to become a
mainstay of its Earth orbit operations.
Elon Musk, the Silicon
Valley entrepreneur who successfully parlayed the fortune he earned
founding PayPal into launch systems developer SpaceX, said the
new engine would not be based on the 160,000lb-thrust (712kN) Merlin
1 series that powers Falcon 9.
Musk said the new
rocket, which he calls MCT, will be "several times" as
powerful as the 1 Merlin series, and won't use Merlin's RP-1 fuel.
Beyond adding that it will have "a very big core size", he
declined to elaborate, promising more details in "between one
and three years".
Musk declined to say
what 'MCT' stands for, and declined to answer further questions on
the project.
During an April
interview, SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell discussed a
project with similar characteristics, describing engines with "more
than 1.5 million pounds" of thrust.
"We've looked at
a number of different architectures, we haven't honed in on one just
yet," said Shotwell. "I think we're still considering
vehicle diameter. But the vehicle diameter is large, 7m minimum,
multiple engines. These are big rockets."
She further noted that
the company was examining grouping several of the engines together,
as SpaceX has done with the current Falcon 9 rocket.
Falcon 9 has nine
Merlin 1 engines grouped together into a single core. Falcon 9
Heavy, three cores bolted together, is scheduled for launch in early
2013 and designed to lift 53t to low-Earth orbit - twice the payload
of the Boeing Delta IV Heavy that is currently the most
powerful rocket flying.
Shotwell said a
possible payload range of the new rocket is 150-200t to low Earth
orbit (LEO). A vehicle of that size would easily eclipse NASA's
proposed Space Launch System, which will eventually be capable
of launching 130t to LEO, making SpaceX's potential vehicle the most
capable ever built by a wide margin.
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