RE: My issue with Musk sending a Tesla into space
February 10, 2018 at 1:30 pm
(This post was last modified: February 10, 2018 at 1:44 pm by Anomalocaris.)
(February 10, 2018 at 12:36 pm)vorlon13 Wrote: Musk's big rocket does have a HUGE improvement over the shuttle. Musk does NOT use ammonium perchlorate in his design. While rarely criticized, the shuttle burned tons and tons of the stuff up to very high altitudes (150,000 feet IIRC). The problem with that is the perchlorate contains chlorine and it is deposited in the atmosphere in the ozone layer. How many aerosol cans equivalent would a shuttle launch represent? Well, a bunch, I'm not doing the math. But any more chlorine in the ozone layer was a bad thing.
So Musk did a major environmental plus by not using big solid rocket boosters to get to his 5 million pounds of thrust. And such a big rocket, for under $100,000,000 would inherently be inclined to be environmentally friendly. He's clearly not utilizing exotic materials/super advanced technology/excessive head count to loft his payloads. Just a quick look at the price tag I think confers a pretty big embrace of working on the 'green' side of the ledger.
As for ballast, IIRC the Saturn 5 went up with sand. Other rockets have used concrete. I personally loved the picture of a used car being used for ballast. Not a practical way of getting rid of used cars, but maybe it will give someone an idea . . . .
I wonder what Falcon heavy’s Actual LEO capacity is if it launched with the intent of recovering the boosters. The weight of the landing struts, structural reinformemts, and reserve fuel on the fist stage has to substantially reduce the rockets payload capacity.
I suspect the advertised LEO capacity is based on configurationsvthat forgo recovery possibility.
