What's interesting is that the Merlin 2's were gas generator cycle engines producing 7,600 kN, a bit more than the F-1 engine on the Saturn V (also a gas generator). Combined with the original concept of Raptor that was being talked about around the same time, as an upper stage engine (which would've used hydrogen instead of methane), and the 10m diameter, SpaceX were essentially looking to build a modern, 2-stage Saturn V (or VI in this case).
@@av_kovko Interestingly there was a lesser known version of the Nova which had a 1st stage of 4 Saturn III 1st stages- each with 2xF-1s- stashed together then topped with a 5th single Saturn III 1st stage as its 2nd stage, which would've been similar to the Falcon XX's 2nd stage rather than the LH2 2nd stages featuring either the J-2 or M-1 engines in the more well-known Nova configurations!
@@boringusername792 PS I wonder why SpaceX narrowed the diameter of Starship down to 9m instead of keeping it at 10m- the latter seemed like a good diameter to handle big cargo in general
Ngl, this could totally work if you just installed the cargo module on a super heavy, would be a great way to use extra boosters in an era where the starship program is mass produced!
While SpaceX was playing with the idea of booster recovery, it's clear that even they hadn't placed those notions into their early 2010 designs. Status quo of efficiency over recovery was still a thing, and SpaceX would be no different until after 2015. If Starship never came to pass, this would've clearly been its non-recoverable first cousin.
Could they have had plans to make the Falcon XX first stage recoverable as well? From what I understand, they planned to try to make the Falcon 9 first stage reusable from the beginning, and one way in which they made that possible was by designing it to stage early, so that the that the first stage would have a relatively low amount of energy imparted to it, so it would be feasible to return it to the launch site (or so that it could simply re-enter the atmosphere at a lower, more survivable speed for ocean landings). Do you happen to know if the Falcon XX design was also designed to stage early, allowing for possible first stage reuse?
Yeah, if this was 2010, that's about the same time as the first flight of the F9 1.0, and they were still talking about parachute recovery. Propulsive landing was probably a conversation topic by then, but still quite a few years away.
Great video...👍 BTW: *NOW* I know what that musical score is. I have been listening to it attached to other videos for a couple of years, but I had NO IDEA what it was.
Hello Hazegrey, I have a video suggestion as per the book Shuttle Down by aerospace engineere Lee Correy. Accurate story of main engine failure on polar lanch, deadstick landing on Easter Island. Thanks, keep up the good work.
They could do something like this today with the Starship super heavy booster and a semi expendable second stage. Place the vacuum engines in a ballistic re-entry pod. Use the second stage to ferry oxidizer and LCH4 to a refueling depot in LEO. Have the second stage dock to a core structure. Once you have a certain number of delivery flights docked spin the assembly up just enough to settle the liquids in the tanks to make pumping easier. Say .05 to .1 gee at the bottom of the tank farthest from the axis. Ore instead of fuel delivery use the vehicle to launch the modules of a new station with a rotating section to provide spin gravity. Around .34 gee.
Just as a thought experiment I just had, could a lightweight air scoop be designed to collect and easily divide and convert the collected air into one or more fuels and lower the percentage of the "compressed, CARRY ON TANKS" ???
And what would be the break even point be on stage 1, with all of the factors such as the the weight of the "air scoop" collector - (converter of atmospheric air to usable fuel accessory) ???. All of this designed to have a set of them be attached to the fully reusable stage 1, (lowest stage), and/or second stage device to be used in the atmosphere and then safely detached and ejected for reusability.
Great video! Just a tad of constructive criticism: Need to have more of a pronounced 2nd stage flare-up and burn at the point of hot-staging when separating from the 1st stage booster. It just looks awesome the way SpaceX is doing that now especially in the last IFT-3 flight. Really nicely done video!!
Tom Mueller, designer of Merlin, always noted that Merlin could be scaled up. Before joining SpaceX in 2002 - Tom was at TRW working on the TR-106 and TR-107 engines. The TR-107 was a Kerosene/LOX throttled engine with thrusts up to 4,900 kN (1,100,000 lbf) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TR-107
At the time it wasn't known that large amount of engines will be controllable. Most engineers had fear that rocket with so many engines will be next N1. That was real fear during launching first Falcon heavy with 27 engines. It was about control and vibration. Falcon heavy opened Starship as it was proof of concept with large amount of smaller engines. But don't forget that raptors are currently at 2.4 MN of force, while Merlin D got only little bit over 0.8 MN. Using Merlin 1 at Falcon XX would require LOT of engines. Probably more than diameter of this rocket would allow for that (look how tight are raptors on starship, and it's "only" 33. Falcon XX was almost as big as Starship. Not as tall, but wider
Not true and never true. NASA doesn't and will not make rockets. They contract out others that do, and this is how SpaceX was and is paid to build their stuff. Nor did SpaceX put everything needed to know about rockets, engines and aerodynamics out of their ass. That was NASA and their many contractors. SpaceX is great, but dissing NASA as if SpaceX didn't owe much to them for cash and missions is silly. When SpaceX goes to every planet with something they built, then the comparison might be much closer.
Wait, so in 2010, when SpaceX was already working on getting the first stage of the Falcon 9 to be reusable, they had plans for a larger, completely non-reusable rocket? Maybe they had plans to make this rocket reusable as well? I know that one crucial feature of the Falcon 9 that makes landing the first stage feasible is that it stages relatively early in its flight compared to most other rockets, putting a greater portion of the thrust burden on its second stage. That means that the first stage can reenter the atmosphere at a lower, more survivable speed. Would this rocket have also have also staged early, allowing for possible first stage reuse?
Tbh, there may be no reason to make it reusable, main thing driving the cost down is flight rate, not reuse, and such big LV may fly very little(look at FH vs F9 for example)
Quibble: SpaceX would never use the crawler or a mobile tower, that's far too expensive and complicated. If they'd built this rocket, it would have used horizontal assembly and been put vertical at the pad like F9.
Depends on Cost. Early Elon Musk did NOT Build (capital $$ and time) … He Acquired and Leased. SpaceX already leases space within Control Center for LC-39A He has NOT built that Water Tower Control Center promised (remember?) VAB and Complex 39 facilities are already there - built for that Class of Rocket with facilities already there. LOOK at Boca Chica, TX for an example after 10 years ! Frame Trench - NO.
Merlin-2, a scaled up version of the Merlin engine used on Falcon 1/9/Heavy. A single Merlin-2 would've been powerful enough to replace all 9 Merlin-1Ds on Falcon 9's first stage.
Merlin 2's were basically modern F-1 engines, using the same fuel and engine cycle, as well as being slightly more powerful. SpaceX weren't the first to consider "Saturn V, but modern." There was a study to do just that to replace Ares V after Constellation instead of using Shuttle derived hardware. But this didn't get very far, and they scrapped it in favor of a reusable design using all Raptors (which were initally conceived to use hydrogen).
@@davidk1308 Agreed, though I think it's more useful to think of the hydrolox Raptor as a completely different engine that just happened to have the same name as the modern one. It never got far into development, and as far as I can tell, had very little in common design-wise.
@@Delta-V-Heavy Similar to the case of a single F-1 being powerful enough to replace 8 h-1s on a Saturn I/IB, and the Falcon 9 is about the same thrust as a Saturn IB
It kind of proves the point that Artemis was never really needed. Falcon Heavy with a beefed-up Dragon could have already been in use while Starship is in development. All that wasted money.
F9 gets LEO, FH gets a Mass Simulator to orbit the Sun going Earth, Mars, Earth, Mars,... FH would absolutely gotten a Dragon to Luna orbit by now, and most likely a Lander and return mission sorted, even if the Crew and Lander travelled seperately, and a third FH flight to have an extra second stage as a payload, sending it out to meet the Dragon, to hook up and send it back to Earth.
NASA even talked to SpaceX about a DragonXL, for Moon missions. At that time, Starship was already under developement. I still think Dragon is better as Lunar Lander, at least for the first two or three missions. It was designed for propulsive landing. Only an airlock module is missing.
@@MichaelWinter-ss6lx Just pump the gas down to vacuum inside, or carry enough spare to refill after the excursions are done,.. or leave the atmosphere in the orbiter and be suited up for the ride down.
I’m genuinely quite cross with SpaceX that they’re dithering with Starship instead of iterating on the proven success of the Falcon series or this much simpler super-heavy.
Falcon is only partially reusable and SpaceX want's to archive full reusability with Starship. They can't change this with another iteration of Falcon.
8 месяцев назад+2
I am also curious if a Falcon Heavy with 4 strap-on boosters would make sense.
Well SpaceX's goal is full, rapid reusability, even if you discount their Mars plans. Falcon/Merlin isn't well suited for that. And this can't really be called 'simple,' Merlin 2's are modern F-1 engines, and they likely would've faced similar difficulties with combustion instability and pogo oscillations (the latter wasn't fully fixed during Apollo, and there were multiple close calls). And being so powerful, they can't use propulsive landing. Burning kerosene cokes up the engines too, so even using a cluster of Merlin 1's for a larger Falcon vehicle wouldn't have worked out as well. These concepts came before they buckled down on reusability, and decided to attempt a paradigm shift (Starship) instead of a slightly better iteration of what exists (this).
The explicit goal of SpaceX from the start has been to enable the creation of a self-sustaining colony on Mars. The first-stage reusability that the Falcon 9 pioneered was always seen as a stepping stone of building up expertise to make full reuse possible so that Mars colonization could be economically feasible. Could the Falcon 9 be iterated into something fully reusable? Sure, but probably not something suitable for Mars colonization. Kerolox would be no good because kerosene can't be manufactured on Mars for return trips, so an iteration of the Merlin engine would be out. Since getting a Mars colony to the point of being self-sustaining will likely require hundreds of thousands of colonists and millions of tons of payload, that basically means that they need to make thousands of very large rockets, each capable of orbital refueling, and each capable of being used for multiple Earth-Mars round trips. At that point, we're basically talking about the Starship architecture. It sounds to me like you're disturbed that SpaceX isn't a fundamentally different company from what it's always been, one with far more modest and conventional goals than those that it has always actually had. Starship is a very risky proposition that even now might not work. (It's currently capable of less than half of its hoped-for payload capacity of 100+ tons to low Earth orbit, and hasn't yet demonstrated atmospheric re-entry of its second stage.) But this is far from the first time that SpaceX has bet the whole company on a risky plan that might not work. Taking those risks wouldn't make a lot of sense if the company's goal was just to maximize profits. Why risk destroying an already very-profitable company? The reason is that SpaceX's goal is Mars colonization, not profit. For them, any outcome in which they don't achieve Mars colonization is a failure, so not taking the risk at all results in just as much of a failure state as taking the risk and failing.
![Blox Fruits Dragon Rework Update [Full Stream]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/EqDAp8udhm0/mqdefault.jpg)
What's interesting is that the Merlin 2's were gas generator cycle engines producing 7,600 kN, a bit more than the F-1 engine on the Saturn V (also a gas generator). Combined with the original concept of Raptor that was being talked about around the same time, as an upper stage engine (which would've used hydrogen instead of methane), and the 10m diameter, SpaceX were essentially looking to build a modern, 2-stage Saturn V (or VI in this case).
Or Mini Nova.
Very similar to some of the old Saturn MLV concepts, specifically the MLV-21
@@Tmccreight25Gaming And the MLV-1A too(it had 6 F-1s on its 1st stage)
@@av_kovko Interestingly there was a lesser known version of the Nova which had a 1st stage of 4 Saturn III 1st stages- each with 2xF-1s- stashed together then topped with a 5th single Saturn III 1st stage as its 2nd stage, which would've been similar to the Falcon XX's 2nd stage rather than the LH2 2nd stages featuring either the J-2 or M-1 engines in the more well-known Nova configurations!
And then they minmaxed the hell out of it
So cool to see this concept animated, rarely gets any attention
It has 27,000 views and 1 thousand likes but i agree this is really cool
@@Depresdudehe means the rocket rarely gets any attention
Very nice!
Falcon 5 or Falcon 9 Air would be fun next.
actually looks pretty cool, good work haze
This looks so realistic I had to strain to see the CGI. Great stuff!
the picture in picture part was amazing, well done!
Great detail to everything! Absolutely fantastic work!
Ah yes, the OG Starship :D
10m wide like a Saturn V!
@@boringusername792 Yep, though one could almost dub it Saturn VI!
Bfg
*MCT
@@boringusername792 PS I wonder why SpaceX narrowed the diameter of Starship down to 9m instead of keeping it at 10m- the latter seemed like a good diameter to handle big cargo in general
I love how you use real footage and mix it with animation
I agree
Really good job with plumes, ullage thrusters, etc. here!
Impressive work, as usual.
I wished that was a thing
Ngl, this could totally work if you just installed the cargo module on a super heavy, would be a great way to use extra boosters in an era where the starship program is mass produced!
would be great to show 1 merlin-2 version of falcon 9, then falcon x with 3 merlin-2 and then this. this will help to appreciate the scale
This is why I subscribe to HazeGrayArt. Way to go! And, go for launch!!!
While SpaceX was playing with the idea of booster recovery, it's clear that even they hadn't placed those notions into their early 2010 designs. Status quo of efficiency over recovery was still a thing, and SpaceX would be no different until after 2015. If Starship never came to pass, this would've clearly been its non-recoverable first cousin.
Could they have had plans to make the Falcon XX first stage recoverable as well? From what I understand, they planned to try to make the Falcon 9 first stage reusable from the beginning, and one way in which they made that possible was by designing it to stage early, so that the that the first stage would have a relatively low amount of energy imparted to it, so it would be feasible to return it to the launch site (or so that it could simply re-enter the atmosphere at a lower, more survivable speed for ocean landings). Do you happen to know if the Falcon XX design was also designed to stage early, allowing for possible first stage reuse?
Yeah, if this was 2010, that's about the same time as the first flight of the F9 1.0, and they were still talking about parachute recovery. Propulsive landing was probably a conversation topic by then, but still quite a few years away.
Really, it's the success of the Grasshopper tests that put SpaceX on the path towards propulsive landing on all future designs.
SpaceX: now make it real
Engineers at spaceX: *dies of working too much*
Next gen Falcon will have so many Xs!
Ты лучший бро! Почти поверил в землю, но нет стай проклятущих чаек
This was unexpected right before the IFT-4 launch.😁🚀
Very nice, it's the SpaceX's new glenn!
Falcon X heavy next please!
Mom: We have Falcon XX at home.
Falcon XX at home: [is SLS]
Quite impressed by these two massive spherical fuel tanks at the base of the rocket.
Dude! Why aren't you working with the Big Boys in Hollywood? Utterly brilliant CGI combined with IRL.
Wow!!!! Pretty cool❤
Seems like Hazegrey got a new model for the KSC. Looks 100 percent realistic for real this time.
I think he used the video from sls rollout
They're about ready to launch this thing in a bit. Calling it New Glenn now though.....
if spacex is ever a thing in "for all mankind", this would be it.
I would prefer a super special heavy booster with 4 or 6 Falcon 9 flyback boosters.
Great video...👍
BTW: *NOW* I know what that musical score is. I have been listening to it attached to other videos for a couple of years, but I had NO IDEA what it was.
Yes! Falcon THICC!! 😅
Was SpaceX actually planning on assembling Falcon XX in the VAB and using the crawler transporter? That would've been really cool!
Considered, due to size - and VAB / Complex 39 existed already
I think wide and stubby rockets look so much cooler than tall slender ones.
Now what we need is a Falcon XXX super heavy lifting rocket 🗿
Hello Hazegrey, I have a video suggestion as per the book Shuttle Down by aerospace engineere Lee Correy. Accurate story of main engine failure on polar lanch, deadstick landing on Easter Island. Thanks, keep up the good work.
Great job, where did you find quality background footages ?!
They could do something like this today with the Starship super heavy booster and a semi expendable second stage. Place the vacuum engines in a ballistic re-entry pod. Use the second stage to ferry oxidizer and LCH4 to a refueling depot in LEO. Have the second stage dock to a core structure. Once you have a certain number of delivery flights docked spin the assembly up just enough to settle the liquids in the tanks to make pumping easier. Say .05 to .1 gee at the bottom of the tank farthest from the axis. Ore instead of fuel delivery use the vehicle to launch the modules of a new station with a rotating section to provide spin gravity. Around .34 gee.
This is now Starship
What the first stage buster didnt come back and land on the drone ship bummer
next, super duper heavy with two Falcon Heavys as strapons for the Falcon XX
Space X - Stiring, The Hands and The Mind!! Moving Space!!
SpaceX content shouldn't be backed by majestic music. It needs _cool_ music. ❤
given the things the Owner of SpaceX says: Maybe Das Horst Wessel Lied or something from the perios might fitting
What was the calculated payload capacity of the Falcon XX? 100T or more?
140 metric tons to Low Earth Orbit
like a Saturn V
Maybe you could do conroy virtus next?
I misread this as "corona virus" 💀
Oh yeah! This!
I actually remember it from going interstellar on a video in my school they used the falcon XX heavy
Apparently this vehicle was also going to be partially reusable. The first stage would land on a larger droneship downrange.
Source?
@@alvianchoiriapriliansyah9882i think they told about it in iac 2010 when they revealed these designs
I imagane this is what starship super heavy would look like if it got painted
If its space x it will work
That looks like the Mammoth engine in KSP
yes, but with 7 nozzles
You cannot tell me you didn't know about the F-1
Just as a thought experiment I just had, could a lightweight air scoop be designed to collect and easily divide and convert the collected air into one or more fuels and lower the percentage of the "compressed, CARRY ON TANKS" ???
And what would be the break even point be on stage 1, with all of the factors such as the the weight of the "air scoop" collector - (converter of atmospheric air to usable fuel accessory) ???.
All of this designed to have a set of them be attached to the fully reusable stage 1, (lowest stage), and/or second stage device to be used in the atmosphere and then safely detached and ejected for reusability.
See: Skylon
0:40 want to see this flag on the top of tower after lunch :P
Lets call is BFR
luckily they skipped this one
We're gonna need a bigger boat....
Shouldn't that numbering turn the Falcon Heavy in to the F-27 ?
There was a 3 core version of this rocket called the Falcon XX Heavy
@@pantheraerospace752 I feel the three core version deserves another X, just for Elon's sense of humour.
i approve
Great video! Just a tad of constructive criticism: Need to have more of a pronounced 2nd stage flare-up and burn at the point of hot-staging when separating from the 1st stage booster. It just looks awesome the way SpaceX is doing that now especially in the last IFT-3 flight.
Really nicely done video!!
Bruh. This isn't Starship
If Haze can visualize it, Elon and Gwynne can launch it.
Merlin 2 engine? F-1 potential grandson on a steroids? Though they could use more Merlin 1 engines to do that
Tom Mueller, designer of Merlin, always noted that Merlin could be scaled up.
Before joining SpaceX in 2002 - Tom was at TRW working on
the TR-106 and TR-107 engines.
The TR-107 was a Kerosene/LOX throttled engine with thrusts up to 4,900 kN (1,100,000 lbf)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TR-107
At the time it wasn't known that large amount of engines will be controllable. Most engineers had fear that rocket with so many engines will be next N1. That was real fear during launching first Falcon heavy with 27 engines. It was about control and vibration. Falcon heavy opened Starship as it was proof of concept with large amount of smaller engines. But don't forget that raptors are currently at 2.4 MN of force, while Merlin D got only little bit over 0.8 MN. Using Merlin 1 at Falcon XX would require LOT of engines. Probably more than diameter of this rocket would allow for that (look how tight are raptors on starship, and it's "only" 33. Falcon XX was almost as big as Starship. Not as tall, but wider
So basically it would have been a falcon 9 on crack
The child of a falcon 9 and a Saturn V
It just looks wrong, the skinny rockets have become a SpaceX trademark
So it's a beefier falcon 9, Why didn't they go with this?
Because reusability is important
Is it even legal to make such photo-realistic CG?
Not in the State of California.
Should an exhaust from vacuum-optimized engines be not so wide-spread?
What if SpaceX would construct a Sea Dragon.
Falcon Dos Equis
Just a tad too shiny in those overcast weather shots.
NASA, a subsidiary of the Space X company...
Not true and never true. NASA doesn't and will not make rockets. They contract out others that do, and this is how SpaceX was and is paid to build their stuff. Nor did SpaceX put everything needed to know about rockets, engines and aerodynamics out of their ass. That was NASA and their many contractors. SpaceX is great, but dissing NASA as if SpaceX didn't owe much to them for cash and missions is silly. When SpaceX goes to every planet with something they built, then the comparison might be much closer.
NASA paid SpaceX to develop Dragon and Starship.
SpaceX wouldn't exist without NASA.
@@jameskelly3502Lunar Starship only
@@FusionSpace2023 Lunar Starship is the "only" Starship in development.
@@jameskelly3502 They’ve been developing the standard starship and lunar starship alongside each other! What do you think they’ve flown 3 times?
🙏
merci -SpaceX-FaconXX-SuperHeavyConcept-Hazegrayart-Milli⚜🌌
Is this Falcon 9 on steroids?
Wait, so in 2010, when SpaceX was already working on getting the first stage of the Falcon 9 to be reusable, they had plans for a larger, completely non-reusable rocket?
Maybe they had plans to make this rocket reusable as well? I know that one crucial feature of the Falcon 9 that makes landing the first stage feasible is that it stages relatively early in its flight compared to most other rockets, putting a greater portion of the thrust burden on its second stage. That means that the first stage can reenter the atmosphere at a lower, more survivable speed. Would this rocket have also have also staged early, allowing for possible first stage reuse?
Tbh, there may be no reason to make it reusable, main thing driving the cost down is flight rate, not reuse, and such big LV may fly very little(look at FH vs F9 for example)
Quibble: SpaceX would never use the crawler or a mobile tower, that's far too expensive and complicated. If they'd built this rocket, it would have used horizontal assembly and been put vertical at the pad like F9.
Depends on Cost.
Early Elon Musk did NOT Build (capital $$ and time) …
He Acquired and Leased. SpaceX already leases space within Control Center for LC-39A
He has NOT built that Water Tower Control Center promised (remember?)
VAB and Complex 39 facilities are already there - built for that Class of Rocket with facilities already there.
LOOK at Boca Chica, TX for an example after 10 years ! Frame Trench - NO.
Funny you say, since, you know, SpaceX is building a giant rocket vertically and not horizontally like the F9.
@@FastSloth87 That one's *much* bigger, and they transport it with just a truck. The big crawler wouldn't be necessary.
Unless Elon puts those chips on himself, I have no respect for him.😁
Is this real?
Animated?
George Lucas music...
Eh?
Those first stage engines look suspiciously like F1s... or is SpaceX reinventing the wheel again and again again, lol.
Merlin-2, a scaled up version of the Merlin engine used on Falcon 1/9/Heavy. A single Merlin-2 would've been powerful enough to replace all 9 Merlin-1Ds on Falcon 9's first stage.
Merlin 2's were basically modern F-1 engines, using the same fuel and engine cycle, as well as being slightly more powerful. SpaceX weren't the first to consider "Saturn V, but modern." There was a study to do just that to replace Ares V after Constellation instead of using Shuttle derived hardware. But this didn't get very far, and they scrapped it in favor of a reusable design using all Raptors (which were initally conceived to use hydrogen).
@@davidk1308 Agreed, though I think it's more useful to think of the hydrolox Raptor as a completely different engine that just happened to have the same name as the modern one. It never got far into development, and as far as I can tell, had very little in common design-wise.
@@Delta-V-Heavy Similar to the case of a single F-1 being powerful enough to replace 8 h-1s on a Saturn I/IB, and the Falcon 9 is about the same thrust as a Saturn IB
It kind of proves the point that Artemis was never really needed. Falcon Heavy with a beefed-up Dragon could have already been in use while Starship is in development. All that wasted money.
F9 gets LEO, FH gets a Mass Simulator to orbit the Sun going Earth, Mars, Earth, Mars,... FH would absolutely gotten a Dragon to Luna orbit by now, and most likely a Lander and return mission sorted, even if the Crew and Lander travelled seperately, and a third FH flight to have an extra second stage as a payload, sending it out to meet the Dragon, to hook up and send it back to Earth.
NASA even talked to SpaceX about a DragonXL, for Moon missions. At that time, Starship was already under developement. I still think Dragon is better as Lunar Lander, at least for the first two or three missions. It was designed for propulsive landing. Only an airlock module is missing.
@@MichaelWinter-ss6lxApollo LM didn’t have an airlock!
@@MichaelWinter-ss6lx Just pump the gas down to vacuum inside, or carry enough spare to refill after the excursions are done,.. or leave the atmosphere in the orbiter and be suited up for the ride down.
I’m genuinely quite cross with SpaceX that they’re dithering with Starship instead of iterating on the proven success of the Falcon series or this much simpler super-heavy.
Falcon is only partially reusable and SpaceX want's to archive full reusability with Starship. They can't change this with another iteration of Falcon.
I am also curious if a Falcon Heavy with 4 strap-on boosters would make sense.
Only with a bigger upper stage (maybe 5m to match fairing)
Well SpaceX's goal is full, rapid reusability, even if you discount their Mars plans. Falcon/Merlin isn't well suited for that. And this can't really be called 'simple,' Merlin 2's are modern F-1 engines, and they likely would've faced similar difficulties with combustion instability and pogo oscillations (the latter wasn't fully fixed during Apollo, and there were multiple close calls). And being so powerful, they can't use propulsive landing.
Burning kerosene cokes up the engines too, so even using a cluster of Merlin 1's for a larger Falcon vehicle wouldn't have worked out as well. These concepts came before they buckled down on reusability, and decided to attempt a paradigm shift (Starship) instead of a slightly better iteration of what exists (this).
The explicit goal of SpaceX from the start has been to enable the creation of a self-sustaining colony on Mars. The first-stage reusability that the Falcon 9 pioneered was always seen as a stepping stone of building up expertise to make full reuse possible so that Mars colonization could be economically feasible.
Could the Falcon 9 be iterated into something fully reusable? Sure, but probably not something suitable for Mars colonization. Kerolox would be no good because kerosene can't be manufactured on Mars for return trips, so an iteration of the Merlin engine would be out. Since getting a Mars colony to the point of being self-sustaining will likely require hundreds of thousands of colonists and millions of tons of payload, that basically means that they need to make thousands of very large rockets, each capable of orbital refueling, and each capable of being used for multiple Earth-Mars round trips. At that point, we're basically talking about the Starship architecture.
It sounds to me like you're disturbed that SpaceX isn't a fundamentally different company from what it's always been, one with far more modest and conventional goals than those that it has always actually had. Starship is a very risky proposition that even now might not work. (It's currently capable of less than half of its hoped-for payload capacity of 100+ tons to low Earth orbit, and hasn't yet demonstrated atmospheric re-entry of its second stage.) But this is far from the first time that SpaceX has bet the whole company on a risky plan that might not work.
Taking those risks wouldn't make a lot of sense if the company's goal was just to maximize profits. Why risk destroying an already very-profitable company? The reason is that SpaceX's goal is Mars colonization, not profit. For them, any outcome in which they don't achieve Mars colonization is a failure, so not taking the risk at all results in just as much of a failure state as taking the risk and failing.
First
true (wuh second)
pin this comment
Don't do it Haze😠
Nope.
Полный отстой😂провал наса😢не могут вернуть своих астронавтов со станции МИР 🌏 будут просить 🧎♀ Россию