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SpaceX Discussion Thread


Skylon

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41 minutes ago, Codraroll said:

Apparently some grain silos use the fluidized bed effect when emptying, to make the grain behave like a fluid. Wonder how much wizardry would be required to pull that off in a rocket, and whether it would count as a solid or liquid fuel.

Solid I would have thought? I imagine that building a suitable injector would be an interesting challenge in wizardry - amongst many others.

Someone, somewhere has probably looked into it though.

 

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49 minutes ago, KSK said:

Solid I would have thought? I imagine that building a suitable injector would be an interesting challenge in wizardry - amongst many others.

Someone, somewhere has probably looked into it though.

 

I’m sure some kerbals considered a coal/LOX slurry...

Edited by StrandedonEarth
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43 minutes ago, KSK said:

Solid I would have thought? I imagine that building a suitable injector would be an interesting challenge in wizardry - amongst many others.

Someone, somewhere has probably looked into it though.

 

coal plants tend to burn powdered coal and you have furnaces burning wood pellets. 

3 minutes ago, StrandedonEarth said:

I’m sure some kerbals considered a coal/LOX slurry...

Yes that sounds more fun :) 

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I’m looking at that last Starship picture and trying to imagine the whole caboodle parked on top of a Superheavy.

I can’t. My brain just won’t do it. I can just about get there with a fat (phat?) Superheavy to give the whole stack that classic Saturn V look but a single diameter Falcon-9-alike stack is defeating me. This despite the fact that I’ve watched goodness knows how many Falcon 9 launches so I’m used to seeing high fineness ratio rockets flying.

It’s going to be fricking awesome to watch though!

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32 minutes ago, KSK said:

I’m looking at that last Starship picture and trying to imagine the whole caboodle parked on top of a Superheavy.

I can’t. My brain just won’t do it. I can just about get there with a fat (phat?) Superheavy to give the whole stack that classic Saturn V look but a single diameter Falcon-9-alike stack is defeating me. This despite the fact that I’ve watched goodness knows how many Falcon 9 launches so I’m used to seeing high fineness ratio rockets flying.

It’s going to be fricking awesome to watch though!

The scale is insane. Super Heavy on its own is taller than the entire Falcon 9 stack, and almost 3 times the diameter. With Starship stacked on top, the proportions are similar to Falcon 9, but it's 122m tall. And both segments are designed to land and be reused three times a day. It's just silly, and I'm glad they're doing it.

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2 hours ago, RealKerbal3x said:

The scale is insane. Super Heavy on its own is taller than the entire Falcon 9 stack, and almost 3 times the diameter

The complete stack will be taller than the Saturn V. 

Superheavy alone is the same size as the first and second stages of the SV combined:o

5d97801c2be6580ea53d29a7?width=1700&form

And it’s gonna come hurtling back down from the sky right towards the camera like some big shiny Necromonger dropship.   :confused:

 

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You know you're talking big when you can't even see the banana-for-scale.

Nice graphic though!

2 hours ago, RCgothic said:

It isn't the same fineness ratio as F9 though. It's about 70% longer but 240% as wide!

 

Woah. So it's not even as spindly as a Falcon. 

C'mon brain - you can do this...

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And as a quick aside - that graphic really puts the SLS core stage tank into perspective too. That's one big rocket stage - which will also be fricking awesome when it launches! Although, in my not entirely unbiased opinion,  when they get SuperHeavy working, it'll get some serious bonus points for sticking the landing.

 

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19 minutes ago, KSK said:

And as a quick aside - that graphic really puts the SLS core stage tank into perspective too. That's one big rocket stage - which will also be fricking awesome when it launches! Although, in my not entirely unbiased opinion,  when they get SuperHeavy working, it'll get some serious bonus points for sticking the landing.

 

Yeah, a lot of people fail to realize that we will get a rocket the same size as Saturn V flying as soon as next year (plus hopefully the full starship stack). I'll just voice the opinion yet again that more rockets = more stuff in space = good-- except for kessler syndrome

Edited by Clamp-o-Tron
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31 minutes ago, RCgothic said:

So that's the bottom of it.

The best bit about this is that it was discovered in testing, it's easily corrected, and it's not something that would arise on previously-good used boosters.

Range is going to be busy.

 

That’s going to be tight. Seeing as Crew-1 will probably keep 39A from use by Sentinel or GPS, they’ll need to use 41 for 2 boosters in 2 weeks, plus the time for engineering review of the new Merlin’s performance and the time to get the droneships back. 

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1 hour ago, Clamp-o-Tron said:

That’s going to be tight. Seeing as Crew-1 will probably keep 39A from use by Sentinel or GPS, they’ll need to use 41 for 2 boosters in 2 weeks, plus the time for engineering review of the new Merlin’s performance and the time to get the droneships back. 

Sentinel is launching from Vandenberg, so they will have 3 boosters on 3 pads, somewhat difficult to pull off, but not impossible 

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3 minutes ago, insert_name said:

Sentinel is launching from Vandenberg, so they will have 3 boosters on 3 pads, somewhat difficult to pull off, but not impossible 

Ahh, didn’t know about the VAFB launch. They aren’t so common anymore!

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