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  On 8/16/2019 at 3:01 PM, kerbiloid said:

Attach 6 finlegs to the Falcon. What's the difference?

And we can see how the Falcon bounced off. Unlikely these simple legs are enough good for a crew.

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6 fins will change how it handle reentry a bit, as in tumble and burning up who is kind of bad. 

Falcon 9 first stage has hinges in the direction of impact not 90 degree off it, it also does an suicide burn  where minimum trust is more than the weight of the stage. 

The problem with starship is an lack of an simple abort system. 

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I actually participated one time in a test of an airplane emergency escape slide in the specific condition when one main landing gear was deployed but the other one collapsed (so the airplane was tilted). The test was to show that the the emergency escape slides still worked in that case.

I'm just pointing out here that there are a LOT of ways for failures to happen, and commercial airplanes are expected to be robust enough that if you survive the crash in the first place, you're supposed to still be able to escape the vehicle.

Starship is cool, and will push the envelope in many interesting ways, but it's got SO MANY unrecoverable failure modes....

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  On 8/16/2019 at 11:49 PM, mikegarrison said:

Starship is cool, and will push the envelope in many interesting ways, but it's got SO MANY unrecoverable failure modes....

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Yeah, which is why as much as I'd be all over a (airline safe!) rocket trip, I find the likelihood of that eventuality to be shockingly low.

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  On 8/17/2019 at 5:35 AM, Xd the great said:

What if we add ejection seats to the starship?

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Not impossible, but the price of a trip (and the rocket itself) would probably be much higher. Not only that but I can imagine ejecting ~1000 passengers at once is pretty hard to pull off.

Edited by Wjolcz
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KSP Rated: This vehicle has demonstrated through extensive testing that each and every individual part will explode instantly upon exceeding design specifications and stress tolerances. Manufacturing quality has been shown to be at or below the quality of assorted items found at the side of the road, and reliability proven via multiple aborts, crashes, and unexplainable accelerations to .9999999 c. 

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  On 8/16/2019 at 10:22 PM, magnemoe said:

6 fins will change how it handle reentry a bit, as in tumble and burning up who is kind of bad. 

Falcon 9 first stage has hinges in the direction of impact not 90 degree off it, it also does an suicide burn  where minimum trust is more than the weight of the stage. 

The problem with starship is an lack of an simple abort system. 

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Where have I heard that one 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Challenger

SpaceX can not afford to rick dozens of lives like that

Edited by Cheif Operations Director
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  On 8/18/2019 at 2:27 AM, tater said:

They said they would not fly people on the Space Shuttle until shuttle flights were routine?

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  On 8/18/2019 at 2:28 AM, Ultimate Steve said:

I don't think they did. The shuttle had no unmanned flights.

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Flight's became routine and safety standards fell

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  On 8/18/2019 at 2:29 AM, Cheif Operations Director said:

 

Flight's became routine and safety standards fell

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Not really.

The Shuttle accidents were failure modes from the very start of flight, particularly Columbia.

SpaceX, should they ever put people on Starship, I think are of the mindset of making it as safe/redundant as possible, then just doing it. Airliners have some failure modes that are survivable (ditching, or belly landings for loss of engines), but they have others that are not really survivable. SS would be similar. If it tips over at the very end, it could be a total loss, or it might be like United 232 (Sioux City). All engines failing would be like an airliner losing the empennage. I'm pretty skeptical of SS as a crew vehicle, but that's what they are likely thinking. Early, test versions could have a crew capsule that could abort, presumably.

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  On 8/18/2019 at 2:28 AM, Ultimate Steve said:

I don't think they did. The shuttle had no unmanned flights.

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Shuttle cannot do remote controlled flying. Starship can.

This means NASA needs to risk astronauts for testing/routine flying for safety data, but Starship can fly thousands of times before Elon throw himself and his gang on it.

  On 8/18/2019 at 2:36 AM, tater said:

 Early, test versions could have a crew capsule that could abort, presumably.

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A crew dragon in the cargo bay.

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  On 8/18/2019 at 4:40 AM, Xd the great said:

A crew dragon in the cargo bay.

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That has no abort mode.

You'd need an LES system. Given the relatively inexpensive construction modality, I'd say build a capcule on top that can separate, throw some super dracos on it, and go (assuming they were gonna mess with crew).

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The Starship starts looking more and more similar to GK-175 / Enerrgy-2 2nd stage.

  Reveal hidden contents

(The nose shroud is heat-protected and retractable + hinged. The wings, fin, orbital engines, avionics are native Buranian.)

Both carry 100..150 t of payload in cargo bay with door(s), both have  ~1000 t total mass.
Both contain the 2nd stage propulsion system.
Both are more or less winged and finned.
Both now have heat-protected nose.

See in ITS BFS BFR Starship series, season 2:
Ep1. "Teflon (donkey)". Starship receives heat protection from one ("bottom") side. ('cuz why fry only nose when you can glide and dissipate the heat with bottom?) (hi, full-steel last-winter Starship!).
Ep2. "Wheels saga". Starship receives horizontal landing and wheels. ('cuz why land vertically when you glide horizontally).
Ep3. "Light steel". Starship receives alumium hull instead of the steel one. ('cuz why need heavy steel when the bottom is anyway heat-protected).
(upd.)
Ep4. "Pillars of Power". The first stage is replaced with 4 falcons attached aside. Payload gets decreased down to 100 t, getting closer to Falcon heavy.
Ep5. "StarFalcon". Both Falcon Heavy made of a Falcon inside and two Falcons aside and Starship projects are replaced with a post-Starship Energy-2-like winged stage with four Falcons aside. Payload ~90 t.
(To be continued).

Gigantic Sea Dragon and Nexus were made of steel on purpose. They were to be manufactured in a usual shipyard from usual ship stuff.
They were much heavier and thicker. So, their huge hulls had huge heat capacity, and their thick walls had low thermal conductivity. So, their steel hulls didn't require additional heat protection.
Their fuel tanks were made of steel due to their huge pressure-fed engines with relatively low internal pressure.

Starship is just as big as aluminium Energy 2nd stage, or a regular airplane.
Steel ships are, steel planes aren't.

Edited by kerbiloid
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(See the post above for pictures).

  On 8/18/2019 at 5:07 AM, mikegarrison said:

Buran not only was designed to be able to fly without a crew but actually it's only flight was without a crew.

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About ten of its maiden flights were to be uncrewed. Also, an uncrewed combat module was based on it.

Edited by kerbiloid
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