totm nov 2023 SpaceX Discussion Thread

[kerbiloid]

Maybe instead of attaching 150 nozzles, take one steel plate and drill 150 holes?

[Wjolcz]

Sea Dragon is probably not impossible. Although, landing it would probably be nightmare-ish to develop. Even if it has to "soft land" in water.

[NSEP]

An 18 meter Starship/Super Heavy could also just be a wider and shorter version, with the same amount/not too many engines, but i kind of doubt it honestly. But if it does, stumpship might be a good name for it.

[Xd the great]

31 minutes ago, NSEP said:

An 18 meter Starship/Super Heavy could also just be a wider and shorter version, with the same amount/not too many engines, but i kind of doubt it honestly. But if it does, stumpship might be a good name for it.

But why wider? Wouldn't it create more drag on launch?

[tater]

 

 

[kerbiloid]

50 minutes ago, Xd the great said:

But why wider? Wouldn't it create more drag on launch?

Because moar engines would create moar thrust than moar drag.
At least, they hope.

Still twice narrower than Convair Nexus.

[Guest]

You guys see this?

I thought it was just sand getting burnt in the fire that changed its colour at first but apparently there was a little bit of fire around the components of the engine as well as of the small tanks attached to the hopper flew off somehow! seems like the test got a lot of super useful info if a heap of things broke. 

 

[Rakaydos]

5 hours ago, RCgothic said:

18m would be just wow!

But I don't think 150 raptor engines in a booster sounds plausible. They'd need something with at least F1 level thrust. Keep it to ~50 engines!

Why is it implausible? that's only 3 months raptor production at the rates SpaceX wants to achieve.

As for superclustering, the advantages of doing so have been known for awhile, leading to research into MicroElectroMechanicalSystems(MEMS) based engine-arrays-on-a-chip. With raptor being a known quantity at the point the #Starcruiser is designed, a supercluster offers reduced development cost and better TWR than a hypothetical monolithic seadragon-esque engine.

[RCgothic]

It's too many moving parts. E.g. if Raptor has a 1% chance of failing in an uncontained way then that's a 30% chance of at least one  catastrophic failure on superheavy (35 engines).

But on ultraheavy that's a 78% chance of something going catastrophically wrong.

That's not even counting additional complexity of plumbing and control systems.

Edited August 29, 2019 by RCgothic

[mikegarrison]

11 minutes ago, RCgothic said:

It's too many moving parts. E.g. if Raptor has a 1% chance of failing in an uncontained way then that's a 30% chance of at least one failure on superheavy (35 engines).

But on ultraheavy that's a 78% chance of something going catastrophically wrong.

That's not even counting additional complexity of plumbing and control systems.

What that means is that you need to make the reliability for individual engines better than 99%.

Also, you jumped from "failure" to "catastrophic failure". In a fault-tolerant design, that should not be an automatic jump.

[mikegarrison]

43 minutes ago, Dale Christopher said:

You guys see this?

Hey, Scott's in Seattle.

[kerbiloid]

1 Raptor.

Spoiler

.

150 Raptors.

Spoiler

......................................................................................................................................................
^ _{U R here}

 

[tater]

 

[magnemoe]

2 hours ago, RCgothic said:

It's too many moving parts. E.g. if Raptor has a 1% chance of failing in an uncontained way then that's a 30% chance of at least one  catastrophic failure on superheavy (35 engines).

But on ultraheavy that's a 78% chance of something going catastrophically wrong.

That's not even counting additional complexity of plumbing and control systems.

Uncontained way I understand as total disintegration of turbopump, not just blade loss who can be contained, I assume this is rare and that you can design an turbo pump to reduce the risk of shaft failing even if it increases the risk of blade failing a bit. 
Harder for superheavy than falcon 9 who can ignore the outside for 8 engines and only need to armor for cascade damage. 

If you have one engine any fail is catastrophic,  on an falcon 9 or rockets with more engines your priority is to contain it. 

But yes 150 engines will be an maintenance nightmare too.
And ultraheavy is just relevant if you want to regularly lift thousands of ton into orbit on an daily basis, quick estimate is 2-4000 ton payload to orbit on each. 
Yes that is cargo ship capacity. Or you could probably put an fully loaded saturn 5 into orbit. 

I say its an design goal, lots of them like the German Rat 2000 ton tank design with a cruiser turret. 
It would obviously have larger engines. 
But I want to live in an world then they are launched daily. 



 

[Wjolcz]

I've been wondering for a while now: how will they deal with tropical storms/hurricanes and how will they make sure the rocket survives it? Seems like a serious problem. BC's weather should be much calmer, right? I still think building starships in one place and shipping them via suborbital hops is not that bad of an idea.

Hopefully nothing bad happens.

Edited August 29, 2019 by Wjolcz

[kerbiloid]

A Starship launch checklist.

Spoiler

Engine # 1. [checked] Sr. Eng. J. Smith.
Engine # 2. [checked] Sr. Eng. J. Smith.
Engine # 3. [checked] Sr. Eng. J. Smith.
...
Engine # 78. [checked] Sr. Eng. J. Smith.
Engine # 79. [checked] Sr. Eng. J. Smith.
...
Engine # 112. [checked] Sr. Eng. J. Smith.
Engine # 113. [checked] Sr. Eng. J. Smith.
Engine # 114. [checked] Sr. Eng. J. Smith.
...

Spoiler

And now pipelines.

Pipe #1 ...

 

Edited August 29, 2019 by kerbiloid

[Spaceception]

38 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

A Starship launch checklist.

  Reveal hidden contents

Engine # 1. [checked] Sr. Eng. J. Smith.
Engine # 2. [checked] Sr. Eng. J. Smith.
Engine # 3. [checked] Sr. Eng. J. Smith.
...
Engine # 78. [checked] Sr. Eng. J. Smith.
Engine # 79. [checked] Sr. Eng. J. Smith.
...
Engine # 112. [checked] Sr. Eng. J. Smith.
Engine # 113. [checked] Sr. Eng. J. Smith.
Engine # 114. [checked] Sr. Eng. J. Smith.
...

  Reveal hidden contents

And now pipelines.

Pipe #1 ...

 

You're gonna need a team of people working in parallel, probably with some software, to make sure everything is in tip-top shape

 

And has anyone begun speculating what an 18m Starship/Superheavy would look like? Like artists or redditors discussing dimensions/payloads/looks/etc?

[Barzon]

no point, something that size is at least in the 2060s.

[kerbiloid]

12 minutes ago, Spaceception said:

And has anyone begun speculating what an 18m Starship/Superheavy would look like? Like artists or redditors discussing dimensions/payloads/looks/etc?

Spoiler

P.S.
I'm waiting for a KSP craft with 150 parts just for engines.
And the hero actually attaching them by hands.

Edited August 29, 2019 by kerbiloid

[Flying dutchman]

24 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

  Hide contents

P.S.
I'm waiting for a KSP craft with 150 parts just for engines.
And the hero actually attaching them by hands.

That shower will put the furnace out

[kerbiloid]

7 minutes ago, Flying dutchman said:

That shower will put the furnace out

That shower depicts jets of water appearing when methane burns in oxygen.
That oven depicts the process of burning itself.

[Flying dutchman]

Just now, kerbiloid said:

That shower depicts jets of water appearing when methane burns in oxygen.
That oven depicts the process of burning itself.

Ah yes.

[tater]

Huge rockets are nothing new at all:

[tater]

 

[tater]