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17 minutes ago, RCgothic said:

SpaceX selected. They bid Starship.

Boeing not selected.

 

loool they seriously selected Starship, HIPE TRAIN GOING TO FULL SPEED. This is going to be awesome to whatch and it's quite incredible, it means that NASA is actualy starting to believe in the starhip project

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2 hours ago, Dragon01 said:

The Starship you're all imagining is a paper rocket.

So were reusable boosters five years ago. We are not imagining anything. We are watching a rocket design change a lot. You know one thing that didn't change? The National Launch System. Or rather Ares. Or rather SLS. Oh, wait. It did change: got less capable and more expensive. Now it needs its own objectives because it's not going to launch Mars-bound ships anymore.

2 hours ago, Dragon01 said:

Why would Starship tiles not require disassembling and detailed inspection after every flight? 

Because they are not The Space Shuttle Jigsaw Puzzle™ and can be mass produced. If they are mass produced then they are cheap. If they are cheap all you need to do is to replace the bad one with a good one without inspecting the old one.

IIRC Shuttles' tiles weren't inspected until some major disaster happened? I might be wrong though.

Fair point, I guess. We will see after the first orbital flight and reentry.

Edited by Wjolcz
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11 minutes ago, RealKerbal3x said:

I wonder if this lunar variant is stainless steel covered in some kind of insulation, or back to carbon composite?

Notice the entire nose is covered with solar panels, too.

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1 minute ago, RCgothic said:

Note how this way Starship gets a lot of practice flying humans without having to perfect landing on earth first.

Where "a lot" is determined by the SLS/Orion launch cadence? ;)

Actually, minus a crew-rated SSSH LV stack, they could also dock in LEO with Crew Dragon.

Ah, and the dirty secret, SpaceX getting subsidized.

They're doing this milking the gov thing wrong...

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1 minute ago, tater said:

;)

Actually, minus a crew-rated SSSH LV stack, they could also dock in LEO with Crew Dragon.

But then they couldn't come back unless the Crew Dragon's heat shield was upgraded, as this proposal is specifically between Moon and Gateway, and it lacks heat shielding and flaps.

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8 minutes ago, tater said:

Notice the entire nose is covered with solar panels, too.

The white coating might be paint, actually. Stainless steel is reflective, but white paint is even more reflective.

1 minute ago, tater said:

Where "a lot" is determined by the SLS/Orion launch cadence? ;)

Actually, minus a crew-rated SSSH LV stack, they could also dock in LEO with Crew Dragon.

Or just send Crew Dragon all the way to the Moon with Falcon Heavy :P

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4 minutes ago, tater said:

Where "a lot" is determined by the SLS/Orion launch cadence? ;)

Actually, minus a crew-rated SSSH LV stack, they could also dock in LEO with Crew Dragon.

Hahahaha :D

So we now have three just selected variants:

Tanker, Storage, Lunar Lander

One highly likely:

Cargo

One a bit further off:

Crew

Edited by RCgothic
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Just now, Ultimate Steve said:

But then they couldn't come back unless the Crew Dragon's heat shield was upgraded, as this proposal is specifically between Moon and Gateway, and it lacks heat shielding and flaps.

They could use lunar SS as a ferry, but yeah, you are right. Oops. I suppose they need a tanker then to go between LEO and Gateway, though.

So Tanker has crew loaded in LEO. Flies to Gateway, disembarks crew, refills lander. Lander does mission, comes back, embarks crew to tanker. Tanker aerobrakes to LEO, disembarks crew to Dragon?

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3 minutes ago, Wjolcz said:

Why even build Gateway at this point lol

It allows for a greater chance of Artemis continuing beyond the first few missions. Having an asset out there that multiple companies and countries are using makes Artemis a lot more difficult to cancel. It certainly becomes a lot less crucial if Starship pans out, but if it doesn't then I would still classify it as very important from a political standpoint, if not an engineering standpoint.

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31 minutes ago, Ultimate Steve said:

 

Well assuming that picture is accurate, there's your answer!

Doubt its superdrako, my guess is an raptor the holes are the size for that. Note that you don't worry much about ISP on this landing engines as they are only used for touchdown and takeoff. Lots of engines for redundancy. 
Might be an scaled down version of raptor too, think they made that during development and see use cases for this for stuff like reusable orbital tugs for going to GTO.

The nice thing is that this does not have to be man rated for earth takeoff or landing, it will be operating in space only 

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9 minutes ago, Ultimate Steve said:

It allows for a greater chance of Artemis continuing beyond the first few missions. Having an asset out there that multiple companies and countries are using makes Artemis a lot more difficult to cancel. It certainly becomes a lot less crucial if Starship pans out, but if it doesn't then I would still classify it as very important from a political standpoint, if not an engineering standpoint.

Ok. But you could just dock two starships together and call it a station.

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5 minutes ago, magnemoe said:

Doubt its superdrako, my guess is an raptor the holes are the size for that. Note that you don't worry much about ISP on this landing engines as they are only used for touchdown and takeoff. Lots of engines for redundancy. 
Might be an scaled down version of raptor too, think they made that during development and see use cases for this for stuff like reusable orbital tugs for going to GTO.

The nice thing is that this does not have to be man rated for earth takeoff or landing, it will be operating in space only 

Could it be full nozzle RCS? Starship is supposed to use methalox RCS anyway. Use Raptors until close to surface (however many hundred meters), kill Raptors, use RCS?

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11 minutes ago, Ultimate Steve said:

It allows for a greater chance of Artemis continuing beyond the first few missions. Having an asset out there that multiple companies and countries are using makes Artemis a lot more difficult to cancel. It certainly becomes a lot less crucial if Starship pans out, but if it doesn't then I would still classify it as very important from a political standpoint, if not an engineering standpoint.

Starship make Artemis make some sense, on the other hand you could just use another Starship as the station, a bit dependent on how reliable the life support system on it is, that is is it up to Mars mission level?
 

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Just now, tater said:

Could it be full nozzle RCS? Starship is supposed to use methalox RCS anyway. Use Raptors until close to surface (however many hundred meters), kill Raptors, use RCS?

They are supposed to be 10-tonne thrusters. Maybe 11-12 with longer nozzles. I spy three banks with three nozzles each, so nine nozzles. That gives you 971 kN.

Let's say that the lighter, streamlined lunar Starship masses 180 tonnes once it gets back to LLO, ballpark. That means it needs to weigh about 300 tonnes on the lunar surface. To hover 300 tonnes on the moon you need 486 kN. Considering cosine losses, I think nine hot-gas RCS thrusters are exactly right for this job. 

3 minutes ago, Wjolcz said:

Didn't Musk say the RCS is pretty much the scaled down Raptor? I think that miniRaptor RCS landing is likely.

No, it's a hot gas-gas meth-GOX thruster using autogenous tapoff.

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1 minute ago, Wjolcz said:

Didn't Musk say the RCS is pretty much the scaled down Raptor? I think that miniRaptor RCS landing is likely.

They has an plan for an methane and oxygen gas engine who is pressure feed as an RCS down the line. 
First versions will only use cold gas, don't think this is good enough for moon landings however as they are low trust. 
 

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