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5 minutes ago, sevenperforce said:

So do they still drop straight down? Those looks like crush cores.

Probably go a bit out, think the medium legs in KSP. 
crush cores.might be used on prototypes but won't work on production versions as they require refurbishment. 

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15 hours ago, Ultimate Steve said:

This is not the most on topic, but I remember Elon saying at one point that no two Falcon 9s were the same (up until Block 5 anyway). Does anyone have the source for this? Its for a speech for school.

This is not terribly interesting, IMO.

Ships are almost never the same, even when built in blocks to what is supposed to be a standard design. The same for airplanes, although we've really been trying hard to change that as much as we can.

It's actually quite rare to have a truly standardized design/build process for something as complicated as a ship, airplane, nuclear reactor, launch vehicle, etc. However, it's important to try, because a) it's cheaper, and b) it greatly facilitates process improvement. The more standardized your design and build process is, the more rewarding it is to make improvements in the design and build process, because those improvements then pay off bigger.

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1 hour ago, magnemoe said:

Probably go a bit out, think the medium legs in KSP. 
crush cores.might be used on prototypes but won't work on production versions as they require refurbishment. 

Crush cores will be used on all, most likely -- they are reusable as long as they aren't used.

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1 minute ago, sevenperforce said:

Crush cores will be used on all, most likely -- they are reusable as long as they aren't used.

LOL. Kind of, yeah.

It's like the airbags in a car. Or the styrofoam that is under the plastic covers of a car bumper. They are one-time use items, but if they aren't used then they last for quite a while.

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3 hours ago, sevenperforce said:

Crush cores will be used on all, most likely -- they are reusable as long as they aren't used.

Spoiler

KSP 2 should have crush cores in their landing legs.

 

3 hours ago, mikegarrison said:

This is not terribly interesting, IMO.

Ships are almost never the same, even when built in blocks to what is supposed to be a standard design. The same for airplanes, although we've really been trying hard to change that as much as we can.

But isn't the differences small?

Edited by Xd the great
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4 hours ago, mikegarrison said:

LOL. Kind of, yeah.

It's like the airbags in a car. Or the styrofoam that is under the plastic covers of a car bumper. They are one-time use items, but if they aren't used then they last for quite a while.

If you simplify the refurbishment and replacement process enough, I suppose manned missions could take spare crush cores with them and replace them in-situ if needed. I don't know what's involved in the refurbishment though, so maybe it can't be made as simple as opening a hatch,taking out the old core, and sticking in the new one. 

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"JAXA astronaut, Noguchi Soichi, currently preparing and training for the ISS Expedition, will start training to board the first operational Crew Dragon under development by Space-X.

The flight schedule will be announced when it is determined."

https://global.jaxa.jp/press/2020/03/20200331-1_e.html

 

I don't  get if he will join the 2 american astronaut from the "demo 2" mission or it will be the next capsule

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2 minutes ago, sevenperforce said:

21 tonnes to GTO on a single launch...less than expendable Falcon Heavy.

Having such a massive second stage hurts. Probably cheaper though, fully reusable.

Edited by RCgothic
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Users guide images (from ars):

starshippug2.jpg

 

 

starshippug.jpg

 

4 minutes ago, sevenperforce said:

21 tonnes to GTO on a single launch...less than expendable Falcon Heavy.

Yeah, single launch with no refilling.

Refilling in LEO with a 100% reusable vehicle is the tech that changes everything. Not prop depots anywhere else, or indeed prop depots in LEO. Unless the vehicle that supplies the prop depot is incredibly cheap to operate, depots are enabling tech with smaller LVs, but still too expensive to really move the dial.

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1 hour ago, RCgothic said:

Having such a massive second stage hurts. Probably cheaper though, fully reusable.

Right, GTO is not what Starship was designed for.

Given that Starship can take over 100 tonnes to LEO, we are probably likely to see rideshares and kick stages for sending satellites to GTO.

1 hour ago, tater said:

Yeah, single launch with no refilling.

Refilling is obviously way more useful than sequential staging.

Even starting in LEO with 100 tonnes, you need more than half of your payload to be propellant to get to GTO on something like hydrazine. So if your notional supersized comsat is 10 tonnes, you could deliver two with a single Starship GTO launch or up to four with a single Starship LEO launch and a commercial kick stage.

I wonder how many propellant refill runs it takes to get Starship's full GTO/GEO delivery.....

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9 minutes ago, sevenperforce said:

Right, GTO is not what Starship was designed for.

Given that Starship can take over 100 tonnes to LEO, we are probably likely to see rideshares and kick stages for sending satellites to GTO.

I think that it might be' cheaper to use the starship than ti creare a kick stage, especially when you have it already in orbit

 

12 minutes ago, tater said:

 

This time I ninjaed you ( and with some margin):sticktongue:

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9 minutes ago, zolotiyeruki said:

What's not clear to me is where/how the canards are hinged.  They follow the curve of the nose, but there's no indication of where the hinge axis is.  Or is it expected to simply be faired very cleanly?

Unclear!

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3 hours ago, tater said:

Users guide images (from ars):

starshippug2.jpg

starshippug.jpg

 

I wonder if they would ever go "full-expendable" on the upper stage to deliver a particularly hearty monolith to LEO then "refuel" the empty to recover it. I wonder how much performance that would yield.

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I decided to make a mockup of the new telescopic legs. Since I can't be bothered to learn how to use any proper image editing software, I threw this together on Paint.

XebAlD5.png

Of course, we'll probably get actual renders soon that will render (hah) this wrong, but at the moment it's my best guess. These legs still seem a little small for a vehicle as tall as Starship, but I'm sticking to my guess that these legs will be used for the first few test flights and that the legs will be improved further when they get to landing it on unimproved surfaces (e.g, Mars) - but we don't know. SpaceX are incrementing Starship's design so fast that we can't be sure it's going to look anything like this in a couple of years.

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