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How did they get the broken fairings into the net if they didn't land there? I don't see how the boat is equipped to take fairings from the water and putting them inside the raised net. Were they scooped out of the sea, put on top of the folded net, which was extended afterwards? If so, why?

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1 hour ago, cubinator said:

I wonder if the RVac will "wiggle" as much as MVac does. Is the nozzle as thin?

Doesn’t look like it. Looks to be almost entirely fluid cooled, so lots of little tubes that will add rigidity. The Merlin’s vac bell is so thin you could dent it with a hammer (or trim it with shears on the rocket in a pinch... <_<).

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13 hours ago, sevenperforce said:

I did some math on thrust balancing for a 1+7 configuration (because, again, it is super compact). I assumed a minimum throttle of 40% and a max thrust of 2200 kN.

thrust-balance.png

Assuming a 300-tonne-empty booster, there's actually no way to successfully hover with the 1+7 configuration. The closest you can come is lighting three engines as shown in the center. You'd think it would work (three engines at 40% gives about 0.9 gees), but the topmost engine cannot throttle below 73% or the thrust will be unbalanced.

So either you hoverslam every time, or you use a different configuration.

I'm assuming the above is with superheavy vertical, and without any thrust vectoring?

There is the option of thrust vectoring which should get you a little closer to hovering, even with superheavy upright.  Taking the centre diagram you should be able to tilt the 40-55% pair away from each other.  8 degrees of thrust vectoring mean the cosine loss is about 1%, which would allow the third engine to throttle lower.  That gets you a little closer to hovering.

There is also the possibility of hovering with superheavy canted over.  Taking the centre diagram, tilt SH so its COM is offset slightly towards the bottom pair of engines.  If you have the right amount of tilt, then the third engine should be able to throttle to match the bottom pair.  (I'm not sure how much tilt that is, but I'm guessing it is around 5 degrees).  This should also give you the full throttle range of all 3 engines, so 2640-6600kN.  (A 2 engine hover should also be possible).

Edited by AVaughan
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12 hours ago, Codraroll said:

How did they get the broken fairings into the net if they didn't land there? I don't see how the boat is equipped to take fairings from the water and putting them inside the raised net. Were they scooped out of the sea, put on top of the folded net, which was extended afterwards? If so, why?

No if fished out of the water or even after getting in the net they are put in an cradle on the deck, you can often see this then they return to port. 

My guess is that the fairing hit one of the arms holding up the net so almost an miss. 

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Awesome comparison of all three Starship 150m hops! The improvement in Raptor TWR is very visible between Starhopper and SN5/SN6.

Also, finally some closeup views of SN6 post-hop. I hope SN5 gets better legs for its second hop, because one got totally crushed this time.

 

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31 minutes ago, RealKerbal3x said:

SN6 is preparing to head back to the launch site while SN7.1 is almost ready for its pop test:

Ah-ha! They’re not water towers, they’re giant Pringles (TM) tubes.

”Once you pop you won’t stop”

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On 9/4/2020 at 8:27 PM, CatastrophicFailure said:

Guysguysguysguysguysguys... :o:o

Am I right? Is that or isn’t that the most powerful vacuum engine ever manufactured?

It’s more than twice the thrust of the J-2, and even the SSME’s vacuum thrust is slightly less. The F-1 had more vacuum thrust, of course, but it wasn’t a vacuum engine.

I wonder if it is dual-bell. It doesn’t look dual bell but it is hard to tell. I do not think we have a sea level compensating bell like the RS-25.

On 9/4/2020 at 8:31 PM, cubinator said:

I wonder if the RVac will "wiggle" as much as MVac does. Is the nozzle as thin?

As others have said, it won’t — both because the nozzle is not as thin, and because it will not gimbal.

They could not use a radiatively cooled nozzle extension like the MVac because the engine is not directly exposed during the burn, due to Starship’s skirt/heat shield. The Raptor will be fixed in place and likely be in contact with the skirt.

On 9/4/2020 at 11:31 PM, AVaughan said:

I'm assuming the above is with superheavy vertical, and without any thrust vectoring?

There is the option of thrust vectoring which should get you a little closer to hovering, even with superheavy upright.  Taking the centre diagram you should be able to tilt the 40-55% pair away from each other.  8 degrees of thrust vectoring mean the cosine loss is about 1%, which would allow the third engine to throttle lower.  That gets you a little closer to hovering.

I assumed 15% gimbal range because that’s what Elon said. Cosine loss can go up to 3.41%, but that’s from the minimum throttle setting already which does not help as much. In other words, that’s 3.41%, not 3.41 percentage points. Not quite enough to get below one gee. 

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52 minutes ago, tater said:

Tiles on SN6 all delaminated from their (white) substrate.

Tiles (TPS period) are going to be non-trivial.

So SN6's tiles were attached using adhesive? Shuttle-style?

Despite their cracking, it appears that the tile attachment method used on SN5 is considerably more durable. Or maybe SN6 just landed that much harder.

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1 hour ago, sevenperforce said:

I wonder if it is dual-bell. It doesn’t look dual bell but it is hard to tell. I do not think we have a sea level compensating bell like the RS-25.

If I know what you mean by dual-bell correctly (and I probably don't) then most likely not, considering that the RVac bells are meant to be stabilised against the thrust section skirt.

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33 minutes ago, RealKerbal3x said:

If I know what you mean by dual-bell correctly (and I probably don't) then most likely not, considering that the RVac bells are meant to be stabilised against the thrust section skirt.

A dual bell nozzle is an ordinary nozzle with a circumferential kink/inflection point. At sea level, flow separation occurs at the inflection point. In vacuum it expands to fill the entire bell.

Basically it is controlled flow separation. The RS-25 avoided flow separation by angling the nozzle in at the base to increased pressure at the expense of some underexpansion efficiency loss in vacuum. A dual bell accepts flow separation by essentially designating where it will occur. 

Info on a dual bell nozzle design

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EhHDuH7VoAAZtaw?format=jpg&name=4096x409

Aerospike-Timeline.00_11_06_13.Still113.

(Only good side by side I could find, but obviously his model for the 1D is lousy)

And SL Merlin vs Raptor:

800px-SpaceX_Merlin_and_sea-level_Raptor

 

Given the Rvac SN1 is set to go to McGreggor for testing, I wonder if the current nozzle is what works for testing without coming apart. They test Mvac engines minus the niobium extension there, and the Rvac is gonna need to be larger than the one shown I think (guestimating dia at what, ~2.5m (less than 2X SL bell).

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