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1 minute ago, Beccab said:

I wonder if we will ever see the transpirational cooling shield make a return, the ceramic heat shield seems to be quite good for starship already

I doubt it, it certainly feels like something that goes against Elon's 'delete the process, delete the part' engineering philosophy. Passive solutions are usually better than active solutions.

Back when it was being considered, I remember hearing about clogged pores being a potential issue. The whole thing sounds immensely complex and high risk to me.

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5 minutes ago, RealKerbal3x said:

I doubt it, it certainly feels like something that goes against Elon's 'delete the process, delete the part' engineering philosophy. Passive solutions are usually better than active solutions.

Back when it was being considered, I remember hearing about clogged pores being a potential issue. The whole thing sounds immensely complex and high risk to me.

It requires tankering fuel. Compounds that are good for use as a heatshield are low density, lower than fuel, so I don't think they even got to the discussion of how do they even implement it. I know Elon has said something about not improving stupid designs...

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Due to unfavorable weather conditions, NASA postponed the launch of the third SpaceX mission with a crew. The launch was originally scheduled for October 31 at 2:21 AM ET, but has now been pushed back to November 3 at 1:10 AM. NASA hopes that this transfer will be the last for the mission - according to forecasters, on the night of November 3, the weather will be favorable with a probability of 80%. The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket will be launched from pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The live broadcast will begin a few hours earlier - on November 2 at 20:45. Crew Dragon Endurance will include Commander Raja Chari, pilot Tom Marshburn, astronauts Kayla Barron and Matthias Maurer from Germany. Until the start, they will stay at Kennedy Center with their families. The docking of the Crew-3 mission spacecraft with the ISS is scheduled for 23:00 on November 3. The crew will stay in orbit with a scientific mission for approximately six months and will return to Earth in April. SpaceX manned launches are still relatively rare. The Crew-1 mission was launched in November 2020, Crew-2 had to wait in the wings until April 2021. After the civilian mission Inspiration4, the company started thinking about increasing the number of Crew Dragon ships.

Edited by Jack White
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22 hours ago, Beccab said:

I wonder if we will ever see the transpirational cooling shield make a return, the ceramic heat shield seems to be quite good for starship already

To go in the opposite direction, and following the path of "the best part is no part" thinking. 

 

How far can you take a Starship with no tiling? Could point to point work with no tiling? Or what about just less tiling?

Or what about a vastly simplified version of the transpirational cooling?

 

I think if there is a "simple" way to vent fuel to the surface reliably, it might be better than fragile shielding, at least in the long run. As technically fuel isn't a "part". 

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16 minutes ago, MKI said:

To go in the opposite direction, and following the path of "the best part is no part" thinking. 

 

How far can you take a Starship with no tiling? Could point to point work with no tiling? Or what about just less tiling?

Or what about a vastly simplified version of the transpirational cooling?

 

I think if there is a "simple" way to vent fuel to the surface reliably, it might be better than fragile shielding, at least in the long run. As technically fuel isn't a "part". 

I'd like to assume that "how far can you take a booster without tiles" is roughly the delta-v supplied by the booster.  This doesn't seem to be the case, but this may be due to lack of initial resources (nearly all being spent on Starship), and that booster 2.0 will have more of Starships tricks to bleed delta-v in "skydive" mode.  As far as I know, both the [resusable] Falcon 9 booster and the Starship booster (whatever its name of the moment is) don't provide much more than 1/4th the delta-v to orbit.  This *might* be optimal, but considering they both use raptor engines you'd expect the optimal solution to be closer to half.

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Not much info yet, but reports are a medical issue, with NASA saying the following: "The issue was “not a medical emergency and not related to COVID-19,” but the space agency declined to elaborate on the nature of the problem or say which astronaut was involved."

So my throwaway joke bet is someone got diarrhea.

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