Spaceception
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Posts posted by Spaceception
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Stoke has hot-fired their first stage engine! About a 2 second burn, but looking to mature the engine, conduct longer tests, abd build flight stages throughout the year.
https://x.com/stoke_space/status/1800498602361622906?t=kYqk_E6baBGvdZrehOpuUA&s=19
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2 minutes, and mentioned a planned flip and burn!
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https://www.aerosociety.com/media/23637/efs-day-2-valere-girardin.pdf
I don't think this has been shared here, but this is a study for space based solar, using fully reusable rockets developed by Ariane/RFA (page 5). May or may not be funded, but I suppose it's something that they have a concept?
https://x.com/KenKirtland17/status/1792995308932063556
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https://x.com/SpaceX/status/1793998848584794574
https://www.spacex.com/updates/#flight-3-report
Still jettisoning the hotstage ring. This has to be a temporary thing, right? Can't be fully reusable if you're intentionally discarding hardware.
https://www.spacex.com/launches/mission/?missionId=starship-flight-4
S29 will be attempting a flip and burn (mentioned in the flight timeline), not just a splashdown. Higher confidence in reentry?
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7 hours ago, Meecrob said:
Having said that, how cool would that job be?
Balanced out by how stressful said job would be
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Looks like this may have slipped under the radar here, too distracted by the pictures
tl;dr
- They're planning to reuse each engine for at least 20 launches (can definitely be increased down the line)
- Each engine produces 733 kN or 165,000 lbf, for a combined thrust of 1,450,000 lbf, which with its payload capacity, makes it roughly equal to Falcon 9 v1.1
- The engine campaign wasn't given details when it'll start or end, but they reiterated a mid-2025 launch date for Neutron.
- The Archimedes engine is supposed to be very close to a flight article, and they spent extra time to build up all the teams and infrastructure needed for operations, which contributed to a launch delay.
- Mentioned a completion of the carbon composite structures for the faring panels, stage 1/2 tanks, and stage 1 reusable structure.
- Arc-Vac is designed to be restarted up to 6 times in space for payload delivery.
- Mentioned intentionally developing the engine a couple times to be within medium-capability, to lower stress on the engine, extend its operational lifetime, and aid in "[meeting} the rapidly reusability requirements of Neutron." I wonder what kind of average turnaround times they're expecting to achieve, and what kind of record they can set for themselves.
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Just now, tater said:
Given the lack of airlock/cargo bay/arm, they might need an EMU as well. Course that would have to be in the trunk?
Yeah, and Musk did mention developing a 'jetpack' which is just going to be a fancier looking MMU so they could move around without tether length being an issue. The training for that alone will be interesting. Probably won't get many details or images for quite some time though.
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6 minutes ago, tater said:
It's like the goons who think this is somehow about making money, or sending rich people to Mars. It's all in service to colonizing Mars. Which again, I'm not against, but not "for," either (min understanding for me would be to first establish that 0.38g is congruent with long term human wellbeing, or it's a nonstarter).
Yeah, the first missions to establish a base should have dedicated medical studies to see if it's even feasible. How long should such a thing take to work out? The first decade or two? Longer?
And now that I think about it, if Polaris II goes ahead as a Hubble maintenance/boost mission, we'll have to see EVA upgrades, to allow longer spacewalks.
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I like that they went into designing this suit with the thought of how to scale up production. There's people on xitter wondering why SpaceX wants to make so many spacesuits, and some of them are the same people who decry SpaceX for not working on the items needed for human Mars missions.
Yeah, I wonder.
Anyway, apparently a PLSS is on the roadmap according to Isaacman, and Musk has tweeted the next-gen suit will be even better, so it looks like they're already working on the upgade. Might see some of those improvements during Polaris II.
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1 hour ago, tater said:
Ron Baron (a large investor in SpaceX—~$1B) was interviewed on CNBC, and as part of an answer about how SpaceX is dominating launch via reuse of rockets he said "$20M it costs us to get to space..." (Falcon 9). Said soon to be $6M (Starship, presumably).
There's something prophetic about a guy who's last name is Baron able to invest $1 billion in anything (looking him up, he's apparently got $45 billion in assets).
And he'd have that information too, wouldn't he?
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Video soon?
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2 minutes ago, DDE said:
The new SpaceX EVA suits seem to be missing life support. External lights inside the main helmet are also a pretty dubious idea.
It's not. Life support comes from an umbilical with the tether. It's just kind of a bulkier IVA suit that can handle vacuum better.
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Spacesuit reveal!
Full image on their human spaceflight page.
https://www.spacex.com/updates
https://www.spacex.com/humanspaceflight/
Imo, it looks better than the IVA suit. Maybe they'll update the design
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So they'll connect to the ISS long enough to do checkouts, but are aiming to separate as soon as possible?
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Okay, so this probably doesn't count, since it's coming from someone doing a high school project (and it hasn't coalesced into a single paper, updates are sporadic), but I find it interesting enough to mention. The idea is sending weekly missions to Mars, with 24 people, or 10 (they've also mentioned 12) people per ship. This is on average. At certain parts of their orbits, smaller crews or only cargo would be sent on longer trajectories, all leveraging in-orbit refueling.
It's not an official proposal from anyone else afaik, but it does raise an interesting question, if Mars missions, particularly crewed ones, have to wait for transfer windows. Most proposals take it as a given since they rely on Hohmann transfers, as a minimum energy approach, but if you didn't have to, why stick to the limitation? Especially for SpaceX, so they don't have to wait 2 years to cram as many Starships in a window as possible, they can spread it out instead.
A continuously inhabited base, being replenished constantly, and never cut off from Earth completely.
Spoiler -
Saw a tweet earlier that said something along the lines of "we live in a world where it's more likely for a launch feed to crash than a rocket landing itself."
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18 minutes ago, SunlitZelkova said:
Cancellation is probably not the only danger. In both the 2040 deadline and your proposed early/mid 2030s target, China will possibly end up returning the first samples ahead of the US, as their mission launches in 2031.
Fair, but;
- That assumes China doesn't hit delays either, I'd say based on Mars experience alone, the US has a strong edge in pulling this mission off in comparison... if we leveraged it.
- In either case, the US isn't a stranger to getting spaceflight milestones taken out from under them, and (the threat or event of which) might be the thing to kick us in our pants to actually supply decent support with ESA, and push to do so without putting it at the expense of other major missions like Dragonfly.
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SpaceX/Starship is the go-to option to talk about I think, but I don't think they'll make a proposal, at least on their own (though, that is probably what a lot of people thought before HLS, so what do I know).
Relativity/Impulse have a Mars landing mission on the horizon, and could form the backbone to a project to pursue a return mission, as Tom Mueller is leading Impulse, and has a lot of experience with methalox (that he's applying to Helios), while also having looked into ISRU for Starship. They might even pull in SpaceX for this reason - giving them real data on making methalox on the Martain surface.
Just based on having a slated Mars mission Blue Origin/RocketLab are another potential team, set to launch this summer (EscaPADE), but it's a pair of satellites, not a lander. So probably not.
NASA needs a firmer deadline for sample return, NET 2040 is too far, and runs the risk of eventual cancellation. When NASA makes their selections, they need a closer date, preferably in the early/mid 2030s, about a decade from now.
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If I'm not mistaken, this will be the 5th vehicle reused for an operational flight (Shuttle, SpaceShipOne, New Shepard, Falcon 9, Electron), and the 3rd for an orbital launch.
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Just in time T-10 seconds!
Liftoff!
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35 minutes ago, Exoscientist said:
About 31 minutes in Elon suggests the current version V1 would be capable of 40 to 50 tons to orbit.
I don't know enough to make a reasonably detailed analysis, but I'll just point this out - in the video, he says "Flight 3" Starship, which while it is a V1 ship, doesn't mean it was built for operational flights. But, just my speculation, the likely culprit in the low mass to orbit has to be dry mass being too high, with underfilled tanks being another factor. V2 is presumably using similar/the same hardware as V1, so it'll likely have those same dry mass issues, but it'll be made up for with stretched tanks and more powerful engines.
Ship stretching, Raptor upgrades, and additional development ahead of operations has been in the pipeline for at least a couple years at this point. So I'd be surprised if NASA isn't in the loop to some degree about it. SpaceX is also currently building the factory and new launchpads for Starship, and likely want to bake in vehicle upgrades before they're finished instead of applying them retroactively like with Falcon 9 development.
Are we expecting another GAO report for HLS like last November? There was a brief one in Janurary. We might have some of our questions answered then if SpaceX doesn't elaborate during upcoming flights.
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I don't live in an area that will see totality, but it's supposed to hit a peak at over ~90% in less than 2 hours or so. Apparently the difference between 90 and 100% is day and night (pun intended), but I'm just glad I live somewhere that sees any part of the eclipse.
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1 hour ago, AtomicTech said:
Hello,
I'm just getting back into the whole SpaceX-verse; I haven't really been following much since the first Starship test. I know it's a lot but what have I missed (other than the awesome IFT-3)?
IFT-2, which nearly made it to SECO, and was a mostly smooth launch (can't say the same for the recovery attempt).
96 Falcon launches in 2023, with 5 of those being Falcon Heavy, and one of those launching NASA's Psyche probe (FH will launch Europa Clipper this October). 148 planned this year (on track for more than 125 so far) https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2024/04/spacex-quarter-1/
Booster 1058, which flew the first crewed Dragon, tipped over on the way back after its 19th landing due to high winds (rip in pieces).
Polaris Dawn is picking up, they're getting ready to test Dragon soon in a vacuum environment to simulate the conditions during the spacewalk. The EVA suit will be revealed in a few weeks.
SpaceX has launched 50 people to orbit to date, 2 crewed missions this year.
Falcon 9 launched 3 times in 20 hours in March. And 12 times overall (not including IFT-3).
Starlink was breakeven last November, and has over 2.6 million subscribers, it's estimated to rise to over 3.8 million before the end of the year. So it'll likely start making SpaceX money they can use on other endeavors https://payloadspace.com/predicting-spacexs-2024-revenue/
That's not nearly all of it, but that's off the top of my head.
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Okay, that looks amazing
Stoke Space
in Science & Spaceflight
Posted
Pictures, now that I can post from my laptop