Spaceception

Okay, so this probably doesn't count, since it's coming from someone doing a high school project (and it hasn't coalesced into a single paper, updates are sporadic), but I find it interesting enough to mention. The idea is sending weekly missions to Mars, with 24 people, or 10 (they've also mentioned 12) people per ship. This is on average. At certain parts of their orbits, smaller crews or only cargo would be sent on longer trajectories, all leveraging in-orbit refueling. It's not an official proposal from anyone else afaik, but it does raise an interesting question, if Mars missions, particularly crewed ones, have to wait for transfer windows. Most proposals take it as a given since they rely on Hohmann transfers, as a minimum energy approach, but if you didn't have to, why stick to the limitation? Especially for SpaceX, so they don't have to wait 2 years to cram as many Starships in a window as possible, they can spread it out instead. A continuously inhabited base, being replenished constantly, and never cut off from Earth completely.

Saw a tweet earlier that said something along the lines of "we live in a world where it's more likely for a launch feed to crash than a rocket landing itself."

Fair, but; That assumes China doesn't hit delays either, I'd say based on Mars experience alone, the US has a strong edge in pulling this mission off in comparison... if we leveraged it. In either case, the US isn't a stranger to getting spaceflight milestones taken out from under them, and (the threat or event of which) might be the thing to kick us in our pants to actually supply decent support with ESA, and push to do so without putting it at the expense of other major missions like Dragonfly.

SpaceX/Starship is the go-to option to talk about I think, but I don't think they'll make a proposal, at least on their own (though, that is probably what a lot of people thought before HLS, so what do I know). Relativity/Impulse have a Mars landing mission on the horizon, and could form the backbone to a project to pursue a return mission, as Tom Mueller is leading Impulse, and has a lot of experience with methalox (that he's applying to Helios), while also having looked into ISRU for Starship. They might even pull in SpaceX for this reason - giving them real data on making methalox on the Martain surface. Just based on having a slated Mars mission Blue Origin/RocketLab are another potential team, set to launch this summer (EscaPADE), but it's a pair of satellites, not a lander. So probably not. NASA needs a firmer deadline for sample return, NET 2040 is too far, and runs the risk of eventual cancellation. When NASA makes their selections, they need a closer date, preferably in the early/mid 2030s, about a decade from now.

If I'm not mistaken, this will be the 5th vehicle reused for an operational flight (Shuttle, SpaceShipOne, New Shepard, Falcon 9, Electron), and the 3rd for an orbital launch.

Just in time T-10 seconds! Liftoff!

I don't know enough to make a reasonably detailed analysis, but I'll just point this out - in the video, he says "Flight 3" Starship, which while it is a V1 ship, doesn't mean it was built for operational flights. But, just my speculation, the likely culprit in the low mass to orbit has to be dry mass being too high, with underfilled tanks being another factor. V2 is presumably using similar/the same hardware as V1, so it'll likely have those same dry mass issues, but it'll be made up for with stretched tanks and more powerful engines. Ship stretching, Raptor upgrades, and additional development ahead of operations has been in the pipeline for at least a couple years at this point. So I'd be surprised if NASA isn't in the loop to some degree about it. SpaceX is also currently building the factory and new launchpads for Starship, and likely want to bake in vehicle upgrades before they're finished instead of applying them retroactively like with Falcon 9 development. Are we expecting another GAO report for HLS like last November? There was a brief one in Janurary. We might have some of our questions answered then if SpaceX doesn't elaborate during upcoming flights.

I don't live in an area that will see totality, but it's supposed to hit a peak at over ~90% in less than 2 hours or so. Apparently the difference between 90 and 100% is day and night (pun intended), but I'm just glad I live somewhere that sees any part of the eclipse.

IFT-2, which nearly made it to SECO, and was a mostly smooth launch (can't say the same for the recovery attempt). 96 Falcon launches in 2023, with 5 of those being Falcon Heavy, and one of those launching NASA's Psyche probe (FH will launch Europa Clipper this October). 148 planned this year (on track for more than 125 so far) https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2024/04/spacex-quarter-1/ Booster 1058, which flew the first crewed Dragon, tipped over on the way back after its 19th landing due to high winds (rip in pieces). Polaris Dawn is picking up, they're getting ready to test Dragon soon in a vacuum environment to simulate the conditions during the spacewalk. The EVA suit will be revealed in a few weeks. SpaceX has launched 50 people to orbit to date, 2 crewed missions this year. Falcon 9 launched 3 times in 20 hours in March. And 12 times overall (not including IFT-3). Starlink was breakeven last November, and has over 2.6 million subscribers, it's estimated to rise to over 3.8 million before the end of the year. So it'll likely start making SpaceX money they can use on other endeavors https://payloadspace.com/predicting-spacexs-2024-revenue/ That's not nearly all of it, but that's off the top of my head.

Okay, that looks amazing

I didn't notice any new views on this one, but I liked the music choice on this one.

Static fire for the ship and booster will be finished about 3 weeks after IFT-3. Though there's plenty of work left to be done at the production site to finish preparing for launch, and addressing issues raised by IFT-3.

I'm looking forward to seeing their next funding round later this year. Having an engine test fire should do wonders in giving investors confidence that it's worth putting funding into, on top of whatever other progress they achieve. On the outside, I think there's a good chance they'll have all the major components of Nova (engines, tanks, avionics, heatshield, payload integration) ready to begin putting together for an inaugural launch by the end of the year. I wonder what the payload will be, probably a dummy one, but Stoke seems like the type to have fun with it.

Looks like a 1st stage tank (probably dev) in the background. Also We could see a first stage engine test from them in the near future.

With this launch, SpaceX will be 21% towards their goal of 148 launches for the year. The year is almost a quarter of the way through though, so we'll see if they can catch up. I really like how these double and triple headers are becoming more common. It's giving us a glimpse into the future of spaceflight when these aren't occasional events, but daily expectations. Especially when so many rockets are coming up with reusability and/or high cadence built in. I wouldn't be surprised if we hit roughly 1 launch/day in the next few years in the US, with bursts of multiple launches in the same day from different providers (and in some cases, the same provider, but probably just SpaceX for awhile) every week or so.

Back-to-back-to-back launches coming up again. And to top it all off

sevenperforce already explained how they underfilled the booster earlier this week (so it wasn't fully fueled), and it's possible they also took a different trajectory that burned more fuel without actually putting themselves into orbit (I'm sure we've all done that in KSP intentionally or otherwise). Those two combined would leave virtually no fuel remaining (aside from what they needed for their tests), which is what they want - less of a risk to have a near-empty ship in space in case they lose control, and they need to take those steps because there's no payload being lifted. It's a cautionary measure for a non-operational vehicle, and doesn't imply anything about payload capabilities. Because it's either that, or SpaceX somehow built a rocket more than twice as powerful as the Saturn V that can't put anything into orbit, and only just figured that out. Do you think that has any plausibility, or is this some sort of contrarian inquiry to spark debates?

I know it's dumb (especially since it'll be far outdated), but I really want them to reserve S42 for a Mars mission, even if it has to sit around until 2026 for the next launch window.

I wonder how close they'll look to the IVA suits or promo shots.

Barely a week since the 3rd flight. It took about a month after IFT-2 to get the ship and booster to the pad ahead of static fires. When should we see the Booster on the move?

2024 is the year of 2020 debuts. Vulcan, Ariane 6, and New Glenn. 1/3 so far!

About a third of Falcon 9 launches this year have been RTLS on ground pads, not bad.

You're right on most counts, though I imagine short of an apocalypse, a government would want the prestige of following through such an ambitious mission. Especially if it was making itself useful during the cruise - astronomical observation of the solar system and target system, studying the interstellar medium (beyond the sun's influence), or the interstellar medium inside another's stellar influence, having some of the best isolation of nearby radio sources available, and I'm sure mission designers can come up with more. They wouldn't have the probe or mission specialists twiddling their thumbs for decades doing nothing but recording status updates. Yes, we're nowhere near interstellar travel at the moment, but then, so was the British Interplanetary Society when they designed Daedalus just years after Apollo 17. SpaceX can still do research too, and even go a step further than these studies and fund some technology demonstrators, or precursor missions like the Realistic Interstellar Explorer (2000-2002) probe. Maybe they don't get to it, but they can very well pass the baton.

I can't seem to find a reference for this, so I don't know if I'm misremembering it, but I thought Shotwell once mentioned antimatter at a conference. And all the way back in 2017, SpaceX was trying to get a hold of nuclear material - which she just mentioned was hard. Though whatever SpaceX is working on in that regard isn't sufficient for interstellar travel - likely just NTRs and/or reactors, but they're not just sticking to chemical/ion. Shotwell definitely said that she believed there would be a propulsion breakthrough "in my lifetime" to allow interstellar travel. Meaning Proxima b. Whether or not this actually comes to pass is irrelevant, some at SpaceX are definitely thinking well beyond interplanetary travel, even if it's only at a conceptual level. And who knows, if/when Starlink is making them money hand over fist, they'll start putting a bit of actual funding towards it like NIAC to see if they can move the needle on TRLs.

So already planning towards V3 of the vehicle? I wonder how it translates to GTO to orbit. The old users guide assumed 100+ mT, and 21 mT to GTO. Could it send a payload to GEO and still return in 1 launch, or is that just beyond its capability?