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8 minutes ago, Ultimate Steve said:

*Starship is on the pad ready for first test flight

*At T-10 Elon cancels liftoff and announces extensive changes to the architecture

Finally liftoff, stage sep, at T+178 Elon calls for abort and RTLS for radical redesign

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35 minutes ago, sh1pman said:

Finally liftoff, stage sep, at T+178 Elon calls for abort and RTLS for radical redesign

First unmanned Starship to reach Mars is falling through the Martian Atmosphere after a successful entry. Elon orders it not to start its landing burn in favor of a redesign.

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1 hour ago, Ultimate Steve said:

First unmanned Starship to reach Mars is falling through the Martian Atmosphere after a successful entry. Elon orders it not to start its landing burn in favor of a redesign.

Bold of you to assume it's even possible to make it to Mars without some redesigns forcing an abort.

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4 minutes ago, sevenperforce said:

You know, this is spectacularly ambitious speculation, but...

...what if the actively-cooled stainless-steel skin acted as a radiator and condenser on orbit?

Think of what they now have some experience with...

The D2 trunk is PVs on one side, radiators on the other (design experience, soon to be flight, unsure about D1 in this regard)..

The have been messing with variant stage 2 deorbits for a while. Some are to increase time between burns for alternate orbital insertions, but they have loads of sensors everywhere, they must have a ton of data on the progression of events on S2 EDL (the "L" bit being a crash in the ocean, lol). I have to wonder about them testing how cryo stages behave with different ullage on reentry, if they let S2 burst if heating increases tank pressures, or if they have let it vent to see what that does for heat removal, etc.

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Elon was tweeting recently about the regenerative braking on Teslas, which is pretty awesome, though not any differently than with any hybrid. Run the motors and drain the battery, and the car moves; invert, and you charge the battery while slowing the car.

The Starship already has hot-gas RCS motors fed from the header tanks, which are autogenously pressurized by the actively-cooled engine bells. It will also need electric batteries to run onboard systems and provide for spark ignition. Presumably, the working fluid in the actively-cooled heatshield will be circulated by electric motors. A heat cycle and dynamo is a Carnot engine.

Thus, methane could run through the loops while oriented belly-sunward to pressurize the header tanks, and then recirculated while in the opposite orientation to condense the methane back down to a liquid. Two different Carnot cycles so you can generate power from both.

Same deal during re-entry.

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51 minutes ago, sevenperforce said:

how exactly SpaceX plans to pump methane through an actively-cooled windward Starship skin

I've seen rough estimates on reddit specify 5000kg methane over 200s for (earth?) reentry with most (80%) of the hot methane vented.

If correct, this requires 25kg/s average pumped thru the windward skin. Peak might be a good deal more.

A single raptor 2000kN/330s fuel turbopump moves about 130kg/s CH4.

I assume you would have dedicated, redundant pumps for this. Not the raptor turbopumps.

Edited by RedKraken
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41 minutes ago, sevenperforce said:

I am curious to know how exactly SpaceX plans to pump methane through an actively-cooled windward Starship skin. Analogy to expander cycle?

There was some good estimates on r/SpaceX about reentry cooling:

https://old.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/a9y9r0/an_energy_budget_for_starship_reentry/

Summary: 35GJ of energy going into BFR from 8 km/s reentry, boiling half the estimated landing fuel absorbs ~3.5 GJ, the steel structure can absorb 30GJ (if you're willing to heat it to nearly red hot), and 28-29GJ radiates away.

There are some big assumptions being made (magic conduction, no reflection), but it looks like surprisingly little heat capacity in the propellant.

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1 minute ago, zolotiyeruki said:

11 more engines = about 35% more mass at liftoff? Or is there something else going on?

42 engines. If you still don't get it, go read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. It's well worth your time.

Edited by IncongruousGoat
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5 hours ago, Rakaydos said:

Solar Thermal power.

The classic.

7 hours ago, sevenperforce said:

The Starship already has hot-gas RCS motors fed from the header tanks

Where have we heard this? I always wondered what kind of RCS that thing would have.

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7 hours ago, DDE said:

Where have we heard this? I always wondered what kind of RCS that thing would have.

I think it's been mentioned at at least one of the IACs, and maybe also the DearMoon announcement. In any case, it's been the definitive plan (along with autogeneous pressurization) for a while now.

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1 hour ago, IncongruousGoat said:

I think it's been mentioned at at least one of the IACs, and maybe also the DearMoon announcement. In any case, it's been the definitive plan (along with autogeneous pressurization) for a while now.

That seems needlessly low-ISP when proper bipropellant thrusters are an option.

Edited by DDE
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24 minutes ago, DDE said:

That seems needlessly low-ISP when proper bipropellant thrusters are an option.

If the goal is rapid turn around, and possibly P2P (something I don't take terribly seriously, but they seem to), then nasty hypergolics are to be avoided.

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High Isp isn't necessarily the best option, depending on what you want. Eliminating the weight of the hypergolic storage systems, and the serious cost savings in not needing to handle them, are a much more important feature for SpaceX than squeezing every last second of performance out of them.

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47 minutes ago, DDE said:

That seems needlessly low-ISP when proper bipropellant thrusters are an option.

Wait, what? I think I must have mis-read something. I thought they were planning on using bipropellant gaseous methane and gaseous LOX thrusters, fed from the tank boiloff. At those small scales spark ignition works, so it's not too much more complicated than a hypergolic thruster.

Edited by IncongruousGoat
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22 minutes ago, tater said:

If the goal is rapid turn around, and possibly P2P (something I don't take terribly seriously, but they seem to), then nasty hypergolics are to be avoided.

 

12 minutes ago, MinimumSky5 said:

High Isp isn't necessarily the best option, depending on what you want. Eliminating the weight of the hypergolic storage systems, and the serious cost savings in not needing to handle them, are a much more important feature for SpaceX than squeezing every last second of performance out of them.

RCS is not necessarily cryo. Both ULA’s IVF and the Buran testify to that.

1 minute ago, IncongruousGoat said:

Wait, what? I think I must have mis-read something. I thought they were planning on using bipropellant gaseous methane and gaseous LOX thrusters, fed from the tank boiloff. At those small scales spark ignition works, so it's not too much more complicated than a hypergolic thruster.

If it’s what was meant, “hot gas” was a very odd way to describe it.

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