zolotiyeruki

In the video clip, Elon is talking about pressure stabilizing the fairing. And I'm confused, because I think of a fairing as a (historically) disposable aerodynamic cover that is not pressurized. Can someone enlighten me?

The idea of launching materials from the lunar surface is intriguing. The lack of atmosphere and shallow gravity well make it ...well maybe not practical, but perhaps less-unfeasible? I mean, you can use the Flats on Minmus to get to orbital velocities with no gravity losses, right? Let's see, it's about 1700 m/s dV to get from the Lunar surface to LLO. If you built a long, very straight track, and accelerated craft at 50m/s (5G), it would take about 34 seconds, and require a track (0.5 * 50m/s^2 * (34s * 34s) )= 29km long. That'd be a pretty substantial civil engineering project. But using such a system would eliminate most of the need for fuel, along with the nasty issue of kicking up the regolith on launch. If you wanted to go whole hog and get the payload on an escape trajectory back to earth, you'd need 2400m/s, and a 58km rail...

I suspect/hope that dramatically reduced launch costs will dramatically increase demand, for two reasons: 1) Supply and demand curve. Drop the price of something, and you'll get more customers. The lower price, IMO, will unleash all sorts of ideas that have never been considered before because of high launch costs. 2) Lower launch costs per ton will have a compounding effect on the cost of the actual payload, because your launch costs per kilogram are now $333 instead of $10,000 (or $2,500ish on F9). You no longer have to spend boatloads of money on engineering the lightest parts with the strongest (expensive) materials in order to fit within a tight weight budget. Since you can now launch 10x as much payload for the same cost, you don't have to worry quite as obsessively about failure rates, either. It may also enable more of a "throw science at the wall and see what sticks" approach. I watched the Smarter Every Day video about how they measured each layer of JWST's sun shield, within a few thousandths of an inch, in a clean room environment, just so they could validate their computer simulation model of how it would behave in space. This effort took several people several years, and is a teeny tiny portion of the overall engineering cost of the project. If SS/SH reduces costs as much as it's projected to, all sorts of lower-engineering-cost alternatives become viable. If I were NRO, I would be salivating right now. Apply JWST's folding mirror approach to a spy satellite, scale it up so it just barely fits in SS, and all of a sudden you're reading Putin's mail.

I think Hubble's a bit unique in that 1) It's still close to earth, and 2) still operational, and 3) it's famous to people of today. Here's a probably-silly idea: Launch a hubble replacement on SS into the same orbit, and recover Hubble on the same mission!

Can someone explain to me why EVA is safer at a lower altitude? I mean, you're still inside the Van Allen belts, and if something goes wrong, you're in the same trouble at 310km as you are at 850 miles.

I suspect this is a floating point issue, and not something that can be fixed.

It sure would make for some pretty awesome sci-fi-like visuals if they fired them up from inside to outside, or some other pattern.

Whoa, I've never seen that one before. That's really cool.

That was some pretty sweet footage of stage separation, SES and boostback burn. That's a nice perk of RTLS! I noticed that the entry burn has a pretty high TWR--my rough timing-it-with-a-stopwatch estimate is something like 30m/s^2 deceleration, which means its actual TWR is about 4. I suppose that shouldn't be a surprise, since the thing is almost empty at that point, and you want to minimize gravity losses, but still...

What would be the purpose of tweaking the position/orientation of the root part, if it takes the whole vessel with it? I'm struggling to understand the utility of it.

Is that the first time a F9 booster has been used 11 times?

Hi! I sincerely apologize for this taking me so long--I finally got a chance to look at your 27 circle entry craft, and from what I can see, I don't have any issues with the craft. Sure, the tail surfaces aren't quite touching the fairing, but they're close enough and meet the spirit of the challenge.

Whoa, I'm getting even further behind. Mods which are informational or aesthetic are fine, as long as they don't affect physics or gameplay.

The ISP isn't great, either.

Would that go along with Gurherren? (for those who don't know any German, herren = men, damen = women)

What's wrong with the idea of catching a bellyflopping Starship in a gigantic net? What is its terminal velocity with empty tanks?

*Some* things inside a rocket engine are designed to handle high-heat stuff. And most of the hot stuff is on the inside. There's plenty of stuff outside the combustion chamber and bell that don't react too well to super high temperatures. Recall during some of the earlier SS hops, there were things catching fire under the skirt, from residual fuel burning after an engine shuts down, or turbulent airflow sucking burning stuff back up.

Can someone run through the math of this for me? That's a humongous difference in payload to orbit. I understand that disposable SS would not need heat shield tiles, fins of any sort, or fuel for deorbit and landing, plus fuel to get those things to orbit. Does all that add up to 100 tons worth of savings?

There's a joke that goes something like "at that kind of altitude, you wave at each air molecule as it passes by." The air is so thin that you need larger aerodynamic surfaces in order to maintain stability. At 50,000 feet, you have roughly 1/7 the air density you have at sea level. At 80,000 feet, you've got less than 1/20th as much air hitting your flying surfaces.

Reading through the Wikipedia article on it, yeah, it has a LOT of lifting surface, both horizontal and vertical.

The "shuttle" is usually supported by a separate rail, so that the screw sees no radial load, only axial.

I love the fact that Dragon has red and green navigation lights, just like an airplane.

As others have said, you don't need Starship as the re-entry vehicle for bulk materials. Could you launch Starship with a bunch of inflatable re-entry vehicles? I.e. a heatshield, parachutes, deorbit rocket motor, and inflatable enclosure to keep stuff from falling out? Stack 'em 100 deep in starship, and you can deorbit a whole lotta stuff for cheapish.

What I'm imagining is airflow running from tail-to-nose and trying to get under the scales.

I'd be concerned about "fish scale" tiles when SS does the backflip and final descent.