Spaceception

Full duration fire, it looked better than last time.

From what I've gathered (just by reading threads of people talking about it), the process that was laid out how to create it seems to be incomplete, so researchers need to experiment a bit to find the right mix. Once people have a consistent idea of how to get the results SK and other labs are getting that shows promise of superconductivity, we'll see if it's legitimate or a false alarm.

Possible room(ish) temperature ambient pressure super conductor discovered. It hasn't been peer reviewed yet, but it can function at >400K (127C), so not quite room temperature. https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/2307/2307.12008.pdf I'll be honest, skimming through the paper, I can't find what the actual pressures were.

New Glenn reusable upper stage, similar concept as Stoke with an aerospike and actively cooled heatshield.

Yeah, I goofed there. But is this sooner than most of us were expecting?

Are they planning a test of the whole system once everything is installed? That would be cool to see ahead of the next booster static fire. I saw a graphic earlier today that showed most of it was installed already.

I don't know if this deserves its own topic now (or an old thread revival), or soon given that there's a lot of interest on TRAPPIST-1 from Webb and elsewhere, but in case it simply belongs here, I'm just going to reply to this topic for the time being. TRAPPIST-1c was not found to possess a thick atmosphere like Venus, with a dayside temperature of ~107 Celsius, just above the boiling point (anyone able to determine what the Terminator temperature should be?). If it has an atmosphere, it's more likely to be akin to Mars than Earth. https://webbtelescope.org/contents/news-releases/2023/news-2023-125 This is in spite of the planet being roughly the same size as Venus, with a similar insolation as Venus as well. Researchers believe this indicates the system has little water, or at least the planet itself. That's 2/7 planets down, but researchers want to observe them again this year to see how the temperature changes from the day to night side, and constrain the possibility of an atmosphere further. https://www.stsci.edu/jwst/phase2-public/3077.pdf

No idea how solid the science part will be, but I'm interested in seeing this. It looks like an original movie, and was written by the director and screenwriter of Rogue One, Gareth Edwards and Chris Weitz respectively. Edwards is directing as well. Poster: And if anything else

SN25/B9 are next for flight testing.

So... Boeing and Lockheed are both part of the National Team with Blue Origin https://www.blueorigin.com/news/nasa-selects-blue-origin-for-mission-to-moon/ Link in case anyone needs it. In light of that, what do you think the odds are ACES will be revived? Lockheed will be working on the Cislunar transporter, which will specifically be refueling the lander. Could ULA get the green light again to develop Centuar V into an ACES type stage?

I actually really like the look of the new lander. And they're adding some interesting elements to it. Also still working on hydrolox, and a way to get long term propellent storage to work? Wonder if there will be any work with ULA on that considering the parent companies are a part of the team, we could see an ACES revival. Or New Glenn's own second stage/JARVIS could employ it as well for LEO to Lunar payloads. It seems losing the last bid really led them to improving on the original design. And it has a respectable payload mass to the surface. I don't think anything's going to really touch Starship for a while, so just seeing it well in the double digits is cool to see. What was it last time? About the same? Iirc Blue Moon is like 5-ish tonnes or so.

Their sole justification is to enable human missions to Mars. That's been their thing for the better part of a decade, and a rocket with a fraction of the payload capacity and volume wasn't going to cut it. Even if that never pans out, their other thing was to build a fully and rapidly reusable rocket that's a significant step up from anything we have, not merely an incremental improvement. And the more you scale it up, the less that payload reductions from reuse matter. Especially from recovering both stages, rather than just recovering the 1st stage. Falcon 9 takes a 30% reduction from bringing back the first stage alone after all. Ariane 5 to 6 doesn't really relate to Starship in regards to why SpaceX is developing it, if I'm not misunderstanding. Ariane 6 was a response to Falcon 9, because it undercut their costs and threatened to take payloads they otherwise would've flown. Similar reason why ULA moved to Vulcan, though that was also driven by moving away from the RD-180. The CEO themselves refused to invest in reusability because having a rocket able to be used multiple times, for them, meant that their teams would be without work. https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/05/ariane-chief-seems-frustrated-with-spacex-for-driving-down-launch-costs/ If anything, Falcon Heavy proves SpaceX's justification for Starship, at least, to the extent that building a larger vehicle should work better than strapping boosters to an existing, smaller one. 3 cores improves the potential payload by a factor of ~3, but the second stage still can't be easily reused, and the payload volume is still the same. A new ground up vehicle, designed for reusability, while improving on the Falcon 9/Heavy's limitations, has a massively increased payload, and the second stage can be reused, and the payload volume is increased as well. Giving you a new range of missions to perform. Heavy co-manifesting/rideshare, larger telescopes, larger station modules, and satellite constellation support. It also doesn't particularly matter how many Raptors have flown. Traditionally, new engines for new rockets are tested on the stand/static fired on the booster before their first flights ever leave the ground. SpaceX just combined this with sub/fullscale flight tests in addition to this. But how many Merlin engines flew on operational Falcon 1 missions before the Falcon 9 flew? 2. What about the number of Rutherford engines that flew operational missions before they were placed on Electron? 0. How many BE-4 engines will fly operational missions before the first flight of Vulcan? 0.

I hope they still have some path to full reusability with Terran R. Even if they decided it's not quite doable now, they could still extend the tanks and squeeze out performance in the engines like the Falcon 9 until they have the margins to allow full reuse with a 20+ tonne payload. How large is the Aeon Vac? Could they add a couple more engines (like 3 engines total, 2 Vac, 1 SL)? But 33.5 tonnes isn't bad at all, could allow some more ambitious deep space missions with that margin, and it should have decent faring volume overall.

How many projects are they working on? New Shepard, New Glenn, General Engine Development for internal vehicles (and Vulcan), Orbital Reef, Blue Moon, Integrated Lander Vehicle, Blue Alchemist, Crew Capsule (?) I doubt they want to rely long-term on other crewed vehicles with lower cadences/tied up with other contracts, and they could be loosely drawing experience from the NS capsule like with the BE-3 engine, New Armstrong (?) Wouldn't surprise me honestly, They're pretty much setting themselves up to quickly bootstrap a cislunar economy like ULA has talked about. 10k employees doesn't sound too crazy in that light, but the longer it takes New Glenn to become operational, the more likely it'll be a bottleneck to their projects.

So another Falcon 9 launched. No discussion here, it was the middle of the night though, granted. But that makes 7 landings for this booster according to the description.

This Falcon Heavy does not want to fly, huh?

SpaceX have already addressed that to some extent. They're supposed to be using a cluster of engines mounted further up for landing and presumably takeoff for the Artemis lander. They might be adequate for Mars too, at least enough for the intial/final moments near the ground.

Raptor is a reincarnation of the RD-270. This whole time, SpaceX was picking off where the Soviets left off. On topic, I would like to see a second flight before the end of the year. It's highly dependent on how fast they can repare/upgrade the OLM/GSE to take more than one launch though, but I think it'll get a lot farther the second time around. In the meantime, while there were upgrades to B9/SN25 over B7/SN24, were there any notable improvements to Raptor since that stack was built? While a lot of people say the engine outs/failures was likely due to debris and stuff from the pad, others are wondering if the Raptors in general need more work.

The only thing that could've made this launch more Kerbal is, after tumbling once or twice, Starship finally separated and lit its engines to continue the flight.

The next few weeks/months are going to be interesting as they work out how to fix these problems for the next launch, the stages held together a little too well. I hope IFT-2 is this year though. The prize for the first methane fueled orbital rocket is still up for grabs.

Yup, I flew a few rockets like that.

Great demonstration of engine out capability, huh

Let's light this candle!

Maybe they're expecting a bunch of new people. Don't they repeat themselves a lot how the F9 works in those streams? With this launch getting so much more coverage than normal, a lot of people not familiar with spaceflight are probably tuning in on top of the enthusiasts.