There are 16 thrusters on the service module and they only need like 4. One is malfunctioning. They’re trying to diagnose the problem to fix it for next time since the service module burns up on reentry.

4.8kg per day gives 1.75 tons per year, giving an 800% increase. That’s still really big, thanks for tracking down the numbers.

48 tons per day, so it’d need to be less than 0.08% aluminum to double it.

Yeah you’d need to put up fewer sats per launch. But they might still have enough lift capacity on starship to do that.

Wood is interesting, but the article doesn’t address off gassing at all, which is a huge problem for communication satellites. Is there a way to keep the wood from off gassing? For 3d prints in vacuum, they metal coat them to keep the gas inside. Or maybe you could resin soak them? With hopefully an extremely UV stable resin. But I didn’t know what the weight trade looks like then, resin is heavy.

But if you’re looking composites anyway, carbon fiber would be another great option. Lightweight but with a few manufacturing constraints. But should burn up to carbon dioxide on reentry.

deleted by creator

About 48 tons of meteorites enter the atmosphere every day. I couldn’t find the elemental distribution, but I’d guess there is some aluminum in there. How much of an increase is 14 tons aluminum per year over the many tons of aluminum entering the atmosphere already? That might be good to get a rough estimate of how impactful this is.

SpaceX has been receptive to design changes to starlink in the past to minimize impact, like decreasing reflectivity and reflection angles for astronomers. They might be receptive to moving to different alloy for the body construction.

Magnesium comes to mind that would be light but expensive. Steel alloys might be cheap and heavy options for later when starship is operational. Would those have similar effects on ozone, or is it only the aluminum oxides?

Lol, Microsoft will focus on profits and shareholders, and shareholders want AI cramed into everything.

I always said hypersonics are better at taking down carriers from my first comment here. But China didn’t have effective carriers. Hence why the US didn’t need them.

I said the US ones were extremely expensive, and you agreed. And that cost is the one that matters for the US.

Nuclear weapons aren’t useful in a conventional conflict by definition. So what is Zircon for if it’s not for MAD nuclear warfare and not for conventional warfare?

Just over 1 min to close 100mi. That’s actually much longer than I was thinking.

Did I ever say hypersonics were ineffective? I said they were expensive. And that stealth bombers are also effective at the ground attack role. Nothing you’ve sourced has contradicted that.

Aside from that, ballistic missiles can also get though most air defenses. MAD still works because you can’t be sure about reliability shooting down the missiles. Having even better more expensive ones doesn’t really change the math, which is why Zircon is so stupid.

Since China is now getting carriers, the US is testing hypersonics.

What system are you thinking? I’m sure the US can emulate it. Obviously systems can detect stealth aircraft if they’re right on top of them, it just makes the targeting effective radius small enough to be nearly useless. Detecting doesn’t mean much if it’s just a notification that there’s a stealth aircraft somewhere within 100mi.

The sources you gave earlier about detecting stealth are low frequency radars. And they said they’re good for detecting stealth fighters. Stealth bombers are more tuned for low frequency. (hence their goofy shape) Plus low frequency is very very difficult to get a direction to the target because of it’s scattering, it moreso just tells you there’s something there.

Kinzhal (the missile the articles are talking about) is the ballistic missile I was taking about, it’s not a hypersonic maneuvering missile.

I’m struggling with what’s the role of hypersonics if air defense penetration is already covered by the b2.

The US has tested stealth bombers against s300, because they got some. But they obviously don’t release the results publicly. They also have arrays that can emulate other capabilities like s400. So the US knows how effective stealth bombers are, and decided they were good enough at penetration not to need hypersonics. Now Congress and China getting carriers changed their mind.

https://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/us-military-has-s-300-systems-reports-143425

When has a hypersonic missile (not the ballistic missiles strapped to planes Russia uses) penetrated heavily defended airspace? (There may be some, I know Russia definitely claims it, but I haven’t seen good proof yet)

So what missions does that mean they’re good at? Penetrating contested airspace that other attacks couldn’t?

No, what are stealth bombers good at?

Why do carpenters use hammers and screwdrivers?

Because they’re the best tools for the job

So what is the stealth bomber’s role that it is the best at?

So why is China building a stealth bomber?

when you have weapons that can engage from outside enemy’s air defense bubble.

Exactly. You can fix that by increasing the range of the weapons, or by decreasing the range of the air defense bubble with stealth.

The US has not had a peer conflict since the b2 entered service. (Good thing too!) But even so, Iraq had the heaviest air defenses at the time.

Obviously stealth just decreases the detection range, but it can decrease it so far that you can weave between the mile or so of air defense detection and still drop bombs.

Yeah hypersonics do do that, but none of that needs stealth! They’re standoff range munitions, you’re outside of the enemy air defense bubble when you fire them, because noone has an air defense bubble larger than their range.

It’s f117, but with good planning they penetrated into bagdad, the most heavily defended city at that point, undetected.

https://youtu.be/zxRgfBXn6Mg

Though it wasn’t quite as heavily defended in 2003, b2s and f117s did quite well against bagdad in enduring freedom.

https://youtu.be/Atm8D5uqr-k

2011 in Libya b2 was also used. Libya had hundreds of sam launchers, so I assume that was contested, though I can’t find as good of a breakdown as the other two.

Kosovo also had about a hundred sam missiles. Again I couldn’t find as good of a breakdown on where exactly the b2s flew relative to them.

So those are some times b2 has come into contact with air defense. Do you have any sources that they haven’t come into contact with air defense assets?

Hypersonics (at least the maneuverable boost glide versions China has) need to get into the upper atmosphere before coming back down gaining momentum. That means they effectively have a minimum range to get up to speed. That minimum range is already larger than any heavily contested air defense zone, making stealth on the carrier aircraft redundant.