totm nov 2023 SpaceX Discussion Thread

[tater]

20 minutes ago, mikegarrison said:

I've already posted all the many reasons why Starship point2point is about as realistic as Space Ghost Coast2Coast. And that was *before* the 737 scrutiny.

Gotta admire the optimism, however, of a guy saying "Starship will be fully reusable with booster reflight possible every few hours & ship reflight every 8 hours" when neither one has ever flown once.

Spoiler

 

 

[kerbiloid]

Spoiler

3 hours ago, Xd the great said:

I wanted a controlled landing, not a broken fuel tank spewing toxic hypergolic fuel all over me!

Why not when you can get both at once for same money.

 

[Xd the great]

1 hour ago, kerbiloid said:

  Hide contents

Why not when you can get both at once for same money.

 

Spoiler

Oh wait.

 

7 hours ago, Nightside said:

My thinking is that the F9 system would lose too much payload capacity after adding all the new shielding and landing hardware. 
 

Is it possible to "upgrade" F9 with raptor engines?

[Guest]

I haven’t looked at any numbers but even if it was possible I don’t think it would be practical. It would probably need so much regiggering that it would be an almost entirely new rocket. 

(I guess the question becomes would there be a reason to do that if Starship exists?)

Edited November 5, 2019 by Guest

[tater]

 

[sevenperforce]

2 hours ago, Xd the great said:

Is it possible to "upgrade" F9 with raptor engines?

You'd have to make the upper stage fatter to accommodate more propellant (methalox is not as dense as kerolox) and the larger engine bell. A sea level Raptor is only slightly smaller than a vacuum Merlin.

And then it would make sense to make the lower stage fatter as well, so you have common tooling.

And then you have New Glenn.

[Nothalogh]

10 hours ago, Xd the great said:

Doesn't sound very plausible, the dangers sound way too high.

Fine, sell the service to the military.

It would be right up their alley.

Imagine being able to deliver two platoons worth of infantry and gear anywhere in the world in under an hour.

[CatastrophicFailure]

 

Finally, we have a launch coming! 

[ThatGuyWithALongUsername]

First proper, fully 100% operational Starlink sats, 1st (4th flight or 3rd reuse) of a first stage, 1st fairing reuse ever... coming back from the launch drought in style, I see! 

Edited November 5, 2019 by ThatGuyWithALongUsername

[mikegarrison]

3 hours ago, Nothalogh said:

Imagine being able to deliver two platoons worth of infantry and gear anywhere in the world in under an hour.

Anywhere that had a landing pad. And a refueling center. And launch facilities. Or else, of course, your reusable Starship just turned into a one-time-use Starship.

And I'm not sure there are many conflicts that can be won by a couple of platoons.

[mikegarrison]

Point-to-point is currently reminding me a whole lot of the blitz of hype in 2001 about Dean Kamen's new invention (except far fewer people are talking about point-to-point). It was going to revolutionize everything. It was a bigger deal than the internet. Cities everywhere needed to change their sidewalks and their laws in order to allow it to be used. Cars and buses and trains and bikes were all going to be obsolete. It was ... The Segway!

Edited November 5, 2019 by mikegarrison

[Rakaydos]

21 minutes ago, mikegarrison said:

Anywhere that had a landing pad. And a refueling center. And launch facilities. Or else, of course, your reusable Starship just turned into a one-time-use Starship.

And I'm not sure there are many conflicts that can be won by a couple of platoons.

Depends on the platoons. Seal team 6 was a lot fewer than two platoons.

As for it being a one way trip... sometimes, that's acceptable. Usually base to base, but sometimes you need to land it in a field.

[mikegarrison]

5 minutes ago, Rakaydos said:

Depends on the platoons. Seal team 6 was a lot fewer than two platoons.

And somehow they didn't need a sub-orbital rocket....

[wumpus]

4 hours ago, Nothalogh said:

Fine, sell the service to the military.

It would be right up their alley.

Imagine being able to deliver two platoons worth of infantry and gear anywhere in the world in under an hour.

I remember some program to do something similar at the end of the Cold War.  The idea was to drop two (might have been more than platoons, probably less than two divisions) groups to anywhere on Earth.  Time to move it all (including gear): 48 hours.  Firstest with the mostest isn't likely to change, but how fast you can get there first has.

[tater]

3 minutes ago, mikegarrison said:

And somehow they didn't need a sub-orbital rocket....

Egress would be... non-trivial.

Secure perimeter. Build ISRU facility. Harvest propellant and oxidizer from the air. Several months (years?) later, the troops head home. LOL.

[CatastrophicFailure]

54 minutes ago, tater said:

Egress would be... non-trivial.

Secure perimeter. Build ISRU facility. Harvest propellant and oxidizer from the air. Several months (years?) later, the troops head home. LOL.

Nonsense.
 

Squad does a HAHO jump from a top hatch as soon as the vessel is subsonic, vessel then crashes into target in a huge explosion, eliminating both the target AND any need to recover the vessel, squad lands in a hellish, burning wasteland to mop up any survivors assist the locals. Egress via standard helicopters since any remaining hostiles within several kilometers have gone off in search of fresh chonies. 
 

Simple logic. 

I might have to use this...

[mikegarrison]

1 hour ago, tater said:

Egress would be... non-trivial.

Secure perimeter. Build ISRU facility. Harvest propellant and oxidizer from the air. Several months (years?) later, the troops head home. LOL.

Egress was already kind of non-trivial for the bin Laden mission, because they lost one of the helicopters coming in. But yeah.

[CatastrophicFailure]

Good view of some proper-looking RCS thrusters here, also the canard actuator... and apparently someone’s taking a shower inside...

Must be like a sauna in there anyway...

 

 

[Xd the great]

2 hours ago, mikegarrison said:

Egress was already kind of non-trivial for the bin Laden mission, because they lost one of the helicopters coming in. But yeah.

Spoiler

Who needs egress when you can just ship a ton of nukes in a starship and let it rip?

 

[Jacke]

As others have mentioned, two platoons of infantry aren't a significant force except when it's a special forces op (and it's usually just ingress, objective, egress).  And like all troops, they will quickly exhaust their supplies they bring with them, so it's either done and an extraction or a logistical tail has to be established.

But a Starship is going to be a very obvious object and will likely quickly lose tactical surprise either before launch or enroute, especially against better opponent armed forces.  And slower transport allows for better prestrike planning enroute on quick reaction.

As a strike weapon, it's a waste of a launch vehicle.  Cruise missiles and strike aircraft are more appropriate and accurate.

And like everything else, it's been thought of before: Ithacus Study 1966: http://www.astronautix.com/i/ithacus.html

That was envisioned as delivering 1200 troops, which is a more flexible size of unit.  Still, logistics still needs to be established.  And again, still likely to lose tactical surprise.

Edited November 6, 2019 by Jacke

[mikegarrison]

Besides all that, launching a missile into a country with absolutely no warning is a good way to provoke a nuclear exchange.

[sh1pman]

7 minutes ago, mikegarrison said:

Besides all that, launching a missile into a country with absolutely no warning is a good way to provoke a nuclear exchange.

A warning would sound really silly. “To enemy military command: we’ve launched a suborbital rocket into your territory, but it’s only a special forces company, no nukes! Promise!”

[Xd the great]

1 hour ago, sh1pman said:

A warning would sound really silly. “To enemy military command: we’ve launched a suborbital rocket into your territory, but it’s only a special forces company, no nukes! Promise!”

Air force spends 500 billion trying to turn Starship into a stealth rocket.

[Raven Industries]

41 minutes ago, Xd the great said:

Air force spends 500 billion trying to turn Starship into a stealth rocket.

"Our project has not found a way to prevent detection of a large object reentering the atmosphere, but instead of writing off the whole thing, here's a way to send hundreds of 500 million dollar dummy Starships into the same area so that the enemy doesn't know which is the real one." 

[Wjolcz]

So are those RCS thrusters an entirely new engine or did they borrow it from somewhere else? I'm guessing developing those was relatively trivial compared to Raptors since I don't recall Elon boasting about them apart from saying they are basically mini Raptors.