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13 hours ago, magnemoe said:

Why the 4+4 engines center rater than 1+6 engines? As in is this something official? 
1+6 is more compact. 

If you do one central engine with seven around it, you can certainly do a much smaller footprint. But you lose symmetry. If you want perfectly axisymmetric thrust, you'd have to fire at least 7 engines for the landing burn. Probably fine, but it's hard to know for sure; Raptor has enough throttle range to do other combinations.

This gives you a skirt size of 9.2 meters with engines under the leg fairings and 9.8 meters if you want all 20 engines in a perfect circle. 

This assumes 10 degrees of gimbal range on all eight central engines. Obviously there are tighter packings if the central engines have a constrained gimbal range.

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Why would you need multiple engines for the landing burn?

Inner Raptors have 210 tons of thrust per Musk.

What's the mass of (nearly empty) SS?

The entry burn is multiples, but how important is symmetry for that burn at ~2km/s?

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30 minutes ago, sevenperforce said:

If you do one central engine with seven around it, you can certainly do a much smaller footprint. But you lose symmetry. If you want perfectly axisymmetric thrust, you'd have to fire at least 7 engines for the landing burn. Probably fine, but it's hard to know for sure; Raptor has enough throttle range to do other combinations.

This gives you a skirt size of 9.2 meters with engines under the leg fairings and 9.8 meters if you want all 20 engines in a perfect circle. 

This assumes 10 degrees of gimbal range on all eight central engines. Obviously there are tighter packings if the central engines have a constrained gimbal range.

Yes, loose of symmetry is not good, yes you can compensate but its not something you want to do. with 4+4 you get 2,4,6 and 8 symmetry and 4 engine pairs. 
With 1+6 you can get 1 core and 3 pairs letting you do 1-7 engine burns 

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5 minutes ago, tater said:

Why would you need multiple engines for the landing burn?

Inner Raptors have 210 tons of thrust per Musk.

What's the mass of (nearly empty) SS?

I'm talking about Superheavy, not Starship. You definitely need more than one engine for the Superheavy landing burn; Elon said the absolute minimum (for hops) is two. They might be able to do a seven-engine hoverslam but that's probably pushing limits even at minimum throttle.

With seven engines in a ring you can fire three or four in near-symmetry and use differential throttle to balance thrust. But the more you are throttling your engines to balance thrust, the less effective throttle range you have.

10 minutes ago, tater said:

The entry burn is multiples, but how important is symmetry for that burn at ~2km/s?

You're right, the entry burn is easy -- you can fire seven or eight there with no problems.

9 minutes ago, magnemoe said:

Yes, loose of symmetry is not good, yes you can compensate but its not something you want to do. with 4+4 you get 2,4,6 and 8 symmetry and 4 engine pairs. 
With 1+6 you can get 1 core and 3 pairs letting you do 1-7 engine burns 

I agree. But word of Elon says the core is eight engines, not seven.

Of course they could still change that. In fact they could even go to a 29-engine approach and do nine engines in the center with a 20-engine ring.

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Texas Tank Watchers, assemble :D

 

3 minutes ago, sevenperforce said:

You're right, the entry burn is easy -- you can fire seven or eight there with no problems.

Haven't they've talked about skipping the entry burn with Super Heavy? It's meant to stage at a lower altitude and velocity than the F9 first stage, and it's made out of heat-resistant stainless steel which means no thermal protection is required. 

Edited by RealKerbal3x
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10 minutes ago, sevenperforce said:

I'm talking about Superheavy, not Starship. You definitely need more than one engine for the Superheavy landing burn; Elon said the absolute minimum (for hops) is two. They might be able to do a seven-engine hoverslam but that's probably pushing limits even at minimum throttle.

Doh!

My bad. Was writing about SH, thinking SS in my head.

What's the landing mass of SH? I see 300t thrown around, so that's 2 engines.

 

 

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26 minutes ago, RealKerbal3x said:

Haven't they've talked about skipping the entry burn with Super Heavy? It's meant to stage at a lower altitude and velocity than the F9 first stage, and it's made out of heat-resistant stainless steel which means no thermal protection is required. 

I haven't heard of them saying that, no. New Glenn is supposed to skip the entry burn but all renders and discussion from SpaceX has shown both boostback and entry.

I'm not sure which way altitude and velocity go at this point. I don't think we've gotten any actual numbers for staging velocity since the 12-meter carbon-fiber BFR design.

14 minutes ago, tater said:

What's the landing mass of SH? I see 300t thrown around, so that's 2 engines.

Sounds about right!

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3 minutes ago, sevenperforce said:

I haven't heard of them saying that, no. New Glenn is supposed to skip the entry burn but all renders and discussion from SpaceX has shown both boostback and entry.

I'm not sure which way altitude and velocity go at this point. I don't think we've gotten any actual numbers for staging velocity since the 12-meter carbon-fiber BFR design.

I feel like I saw it in one of Elon's tweets a while back. But my memory is fuzzy.

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43 minutes ago, RealKerbal3x said:

Texas Tank Watchers, assemble :D

 

Haven't they've talked about skipping the entry burn with Super Heavy? It's meant to stage at a lower altitude and velocity than the F9 first stage, and it's made out of heat-resistant stainless steel which means no thermal protection is required. 

Yes, SH is supposed to don't need an entry burn, steel+ some thermal coating on parts who get hot and its should work. 
Good chance they have an floor to protect the engine mechanic too, look at N1 images for an idea, have an hatch for entry into the engineering space and this is removable sections if you need to pull stuff out. 
 

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