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Starship looks more and more like a space shuttle?


Serenity

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I dont know but i am getting confused.Starship looks to me like a big space shuttle that can also power land.

If it will glide down to earth why not land like a space shuttle?Is the size the problem?Is it to avoid building/having huge runways?

I am just a kerbal player i have no idea about these things.

Edited by Boyster
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It's a second stage that has to do Entry, Descent, and Landing from at least orbit. As a result, many of the requirements are the same. Right now the only craft to do this and survive well enough to be reused have been Shuttle, and the X-37. There might be different paths to success here, but the two that have actually done it show some similarities.

 

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It really is looking more and more like the Shuttle, and I hope it doesn't end up like it. It's got a similar (even broader, in fact) mission, I wouldn't be surprised if it ends up suffering similar problems. So far they avoided giving it SRBs, at least...

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Is it any new design changes? 
But they dropped the rear leg / tail fin and starship has air brakes, not wings, yes they generates some lift the same way an Apollo capsule does. But is basically an free fall 
But you can optimize drag while aiming for the landing spot. 
 

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Starship isn't trying to glide like an airplane, the fins are for drag and control instead of lift. Then it turns around at the right speed and does its powered descent.

The shuttle had to land like an airplane, and it handled pretty poorly at that. Huge wings also add mass. Starship's vertical landings are simpler in some ways that make it easier to deal with.

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Quote

Starship looks more and more like a space shuttle?

No, and I have no idea why this is gettin brought up repeatedly. It’s evolving in a completely different direction than Shuttle. ITS-2016 and BFR-2017 looked more like a Shuttle than the current Starship design.

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3 hours ago, cubinator said:

Starship isn't trying to glide like an airplane, the fins are for drag and control instead of lift. Then it turns around at the right speed and does its powered descent.

The shuttle had to land like an airplane, and it handled pretty poorly at that. Huge wings also add mass. Starship's vertical landings are simpler in some ways that make it easier to deal with.

I am guessing the wings that it would need to glide land wouldnt add more mass than having all the required things to achieve power landing.

Not to mention how complicated that last minute turn is and the powered landing compared to a ''simple'' shuttle landing.

All i am saying is i am feeling this is getting way more complicated and dangerous than a space shuttle...

Edited by Boyster
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10 minutes ago, Boyster said:

I am guessing the wings that it would need to glide wouldnt add more mass than having all the required things to achieve power landing.Not to mention how complicated that last minute turn is and the powered landing compared to a ''simple'' shuttle landing.

All i am saying is i am feeling this is getting way more complicated and dangerous than a space shuttle...

Maybe they are different means to the same end, and the Shuttle simply couldn't achieve the reusability savings it needed to do big space infrastructure. SpaceX has learned a lot about reusability and cost-saving - hopefully they can give Starship that capability.

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4 minutes ago, cubinator said:

Maybe they are different means to the same end, and the Shuttle simply couldn't achieve the reusability savings it needed to do big space infrastructure. SpaceX has learned a lot about reusability and cost-saving - hopefully they can give Starship that capability.

Yeah, i really hope so as well.I love SpaceX but the more i think about Starship and Earth, it doesnt make sense to my mind.For other planets for sure but here...i think like its not really any better than Space Shuttle, even so feels more dangerous and complicated.

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25 minutes ago, Boyster said:

I am guessing the wings that it would need to glide land wouldnt add more mass than having all the required things to achieve power landing

That's all well and good if it was only meant to land on Earth.

You still need all the powered landing stuff to land... everywhere else.

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36 minutes ago, Geonovast said:

That's all well and good if it was only meant to land on Earth.

You still need all the powered landing stuff to land... everywhere else.

Yeah thats true, was kinda talking about the best Earth Only way to have such a vessel.For other planets for sure, there is no doubt Spacex has so far the best way to go on.

Edited by Boyster
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1 hour ago, cubinator said:

Maybe they are different means to the same end, and the Shuttle simply couldn't achieve the reusability savings it needed to do big space infrastructure. SpaceX has learned a lot about reusability and cost-saving - hopefully they can give Starship that capability.

One major change is automation, the tail lander is not an new idea it dating back to WW2 or earlier. However even expert test pilots had serious problems landing them. 
And the obvious rolle for them would be to give an cruiser or convoy escort an small anti sub, anti air and recon flight wing. No its not some place you wanted to use expert pilots, its kind of an noob posting because its an noob job, you go up search for enemy subs or recon planes and attack them if you find them to destroy or drive off and return. 

For the shuttle back then they designed it it had to land like an plane. Looking back to most designs for reuse of boosters, they landed as planes as this was the way to land, the Soviet space shuttle and also the US one had liquid fueled booster ideas with scaled up cruise missile wings and jet engines. 
SpaceX changed that. 

And not having wings has an benefit, Launching something with wings on top of an rocket has issues, the x37 need to launch inside an fairing as its on top of an rocket. 
The shuttle escaped it but thee everything was off center anyway :) 

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At last the Starship will become a larger Starfighter.

Spoiler

800px-Lockheed_XF-104.jpg

When the militaries don't put pressure on the developer requiring the 2000 km side maneuver, but when the developer still needs to dissipate heat with as great area as he can (the bottom), and the horizontal landing becomes a more stable solution.

When the developer does have  computers able to easily land the airplane at 400+ km/h landing speed.

Edited by kerbiloid
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18 hours ago, Dragon01 said:

It really is looking more and more like the Shuttle, and I hope it doesn't end up like it. It's got a similar (even broader, in fact) mission, I wouldn't be surprised if it ends up suffering similar problems. So far they avoided giving it SRBs, at least...

They aren't the same at all, or at least Starship is not falling into the same traps.

Shuttle: attached horizontally, wings for lift, re-enters nose-first (airplane style).  External fuel tank, burns fuel (H2) from sea level.

Starship: attached vertically, wings to maintain orientation, re-enters belly first (skydiver style).  Internal fuel tank, burns fuel (CH4) from staging.

The last bit might be seen as problematic depending on the cost of the fuel tank and how many missions you are flying.  But wing mass was a huge part of shuttle's orbital mass issue (although the "return a keyhole from orbit" was probably the worst.  And it looks like anything Starship can bring to orbit it can probably return), and presumably avoided on Starship.  Also Starship won't be directly damaged by any debris from the booster stage (short of an explosion).  Also the re-entry style should make for significant visual differences as Starship has a traditional (for rockets) pointy nosecone while Shuttle and X-37 have blunt noses.

37 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

At last the Starship will become a larger Starfighter.

If and only if SpaceX decides to abandon the "skydiver" landing system (and possibly retrothrusting as well).  And never mind the computers, think of the poor tire engineers.

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14 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

The tired tire engineers...

The Starship dry mass is 120 t (according to Zubrin). As heavy as a plane.

Starship is still hoverslamming (probably more hover than slam in crewed flight).  No tires needed.

As far a I know, passenger jets are pretty much pushing the limit of tire technology (although such manufacturers are quite silent about anything in their field so who really knows what those limits might be).

Edited by wumpus
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59 minutes ago, wumpus said:

Starship: attached vertically, wings to maintain orientation, re-enters belly first (skydiver style).  Internal fuel tank, burns fuel (CH4) from staging.

Actually, Shuttle reentered belly-first, too (specifically, at an about 45 degree angle). That's why it has the heatshield there. It transitioned to nose-first when the air got thick enough (which Starship will also have to do if it doesn't want to tumble). Wings on Starship look like they will provide plenty of lift, too, combined with the fuselage it should glide surprisingly well. Not quite like the Shuttle, but perhaps even enough to make glide landing an abort option. Shuttle had way too much wing for its weight, actually, the current Starship is mostly in line with other lifting RVs. It won't have problems associated with ET and SRBs, at least.

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16 hours ago, cubinator said:

Maybe they are different means to the same end, and the Shuttle simply couldn't achieve the reusability savings it needed to do big space infrastructure. SpaceX has learned a lot about reusability and cost-saving - hopefully they can give Starship that capability.

The shuttle had two problems, the first was that it was very stresses as in it worked on the very edge of capacity, this required that you did lots of maintenance between missions. 
This included the heat shield tiles. 

Starship avoid much of this as its not very stressed, main benefit of building it large is that you have ton of margins. 
Lets say it end up only taking 50 ton to LEO, well its still 50 ton fully reusable to LEO. 

heat tiles is another one except we don't know how their heat tiles works, however SpaceX permanently plan to store starship outside. 
 

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16 hours ago, magnemoe said:

The shuttle had two problems, the first was that it was very stresses as in it worked on the very edge of capacity, this required that you did lots of maintenance between missions. 
This included the heat shield tiles. 

Starship avoid much of this as its not very stressed, main benefit of building it large is that you have ton of margins. 
Lets say it end up only taking 50 ton to LEO, well its still 50 ton fully reusable to LEO. 

heat tiles is another one except we don't know how their heat tiles works, however SpaceX permanently plan to store starship outside. 
 

The heat tiles are meant to be glass, whatever that means. I'm guessing it might be ceramics + some sort of addatives that make it glass-like.

Anybody knows any material that is glass-like and heat resistant?

Edit: so apparently adding iron to glass makes it absorb infrared light. That's probably undesirable in heat shields.

Fused quartz seems to be pretty temperature resistant (up to 1500°C). Maybe transparent glass + light-reflecting steel underneath could work?

Edit2: fiberglass has some seriously high melting point too (~2000°C).

Scratch that. It's 2000°F.

Edited by Wjolcz
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