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16 hours ago, magnemoe said:

Why tracks, its running on an flat deck, that is unless they want to move the rocket with it.

Caterpillar treads.

Probably to maximize load-bearing capacity.

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29 minutes ago, Starman4308 said:

It's an iron-nickel-chromium alloy noted for corrosion resistance and resilience to temperature and pressure. It's commonly used in aerospace applications as a result; it's hard to work with, but quite robust.

And IIRC, fairly heavy, or they'd build entire spacecraft out of it

http://www.specialmetals.com/assets/smc/documents/alloys/inconel/inconel-alloy-625.pdf

In Star Wars, the Iconic X-wing fighter is listed as an Incom T-65. I've always had a sneaking suspicion that Incom is a play on inconel, but I suppose it could be coincidence.

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3 hours ago, StrandedonEarth said:

I've always had a sneaking suspicion that Incom is a play on inconel

Or after a Russian real estate company with a side business of car dealership.

Or after an Italian newsreel producer...

3 hours ago, StrandedonEarth said:

And IIRC, fairly heavy, or they'd build entire spacecraft out of it

Hold Douglas’s beer, they were going to build a follow-up to the X-15 out of thorium.

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Found this render. Does this configuration make any sense? Is there a mission that would benefit from this?

I doubt that droneship landing for Super Heavy will be a thing, so let’s assume that all 3 boosters RTLS.

DwhPSnEW0AEo2xH?format=jpg&name=large

Edited by sh1pman
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1 minute ago, sh1pman said:

Found this render. Does this configuration make any sense? Is there a mission that would benefit from this?

Probably not, not with orbital refueling, anyway. You’d essentially be throwing away the center core when you could get the same result (a fully or near-fully fueled Starship in orbit) for (presumably) less by just launching multiple tankers. 

Rapid reuse really will be quite the paradigm changer. :D

Also, it’s bugging the crap out of me that the “bottom” of that Starship is point off in some weird direction instead of in line with the booster mounting axis. :huh:

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Speaking of alternate configurations, I wonder, if Starship ever needs an extremely big boost, if you could launch a one-off expendable stage one as an SSTO, refuel it all the way up, and use that to boost Starship super far. Maybe for outer planet missions? Although for outer planet missions a different architecture would probably be better.

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5 minutes ago, CatastrophicFailure said:

Probably not, not with orbital refueling, anyway. You’d essentially be throwing away the center core when you could get the same result (a fully or near-fully fueled Starship in orbit) for (presumably) less by just launching multiple tankers.

No need to throw it away, let’s say that all 3 boosters are landed back at the launch site. 

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7 minutes ago, sh1pman said:

No need to throw it away, let’s say that all 3 boosters are landed back at the launch site. 

Even moreso, then. Remember, they ditched the idea of RTLS-ing the FH center core because it's just not worth the performance hit. Even if you recovered the SH core downrange, what's the benefit? The only advantage I could see in this stack vs orbital refueling is if you had some time-sensitive, Armageddon-esque, ERMAGHERD WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE let's launch B-list celebrities to save us! type disaster and needed that thing up there now. But you'd still need months or years to develop it, during which time you could refuel multiple Starships, so... :/

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1 hour ago, sh1pman said:

Found this render. Does this configuration make any sense? Is there a mission that would benefit from this?

Makes no sense.

Boosters still all separate at ~2-2.5 km/s, so the upper stage is going exactly the same velocity it would be going with just the one stage, and still burns all propellants to make orbit. If it was the tanker variant (not shown) then it might get more to orbit, but it would not get 3X more to orbit, so why not just fly the same booster 3 times?

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1 hour ago, sh1pman said:

Found this render. Does this configuration make any sense? Is there a mission that would benefit from this?

I doubt that droneship landing for Super Heavy will be a thing, so let’s assume that all 3 boosters RTLS.

DwhPSnEW0AEo2xH?format=jpg&name=large

it has more boosters so it defenetly has benefits!

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On 2/16/2019 at 6:08 AM, Starman4308 said:

It's an iron-nickel-chromium alloy noted for corrosion resistance and resilience to temperature and pressure. It's commonly used in aerospace applications as a result; it's hard to work with, but quite robust.

Yeah. See also Hastelloy, which is the other major "super-alloy" used for similar applications. Hastelloy has molybdenum instead of chromium (mo is right below cr on the periodic table, so they share many chemical properties).

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