totm nov 2023 SpaceX Discussion Thread

[Brotoro]

Sixth flight for this booster.

Again, they are hosing off the deck of the drone ship. Why?

Again, the will be recovering the fairing halves from the drink. Are they not trying to catch them at all anymore, or is it that they can't attempt a catch in the dark?

Booster looks very steamy tonight. Lackof wind?

Just high humidity, I guess.

Falcon 9 is in Startup.

Liftoff!

They didn't even give a verbal countdown. Odd.

MECO. Good stage 2 ignition.

Deploys the hot waffles.

[Brotoro]

Entry burn.  I loves me a good entry burn.

Landed!

Interesting. They actually had video of the start of the landing burn from the booster. Then saw the booster coming in from the drone...but lost that signal. THEN showed view from the booster's camera of it sitting on the deck. And later a view of the landed booster from the deck cam.

[RyanRising]

1 hour ago, Brotoro said:

(Snip)

Again, the will be recovering the fairing halves from the drink. Are they not trying to catch them at all anymore, or is it that they can't attempt a catch in the dark?

(Snip)

They don’t appear to be - recently they got rid of the catch arms on the two fairing recovery ships that had them. Probably the juice wasn’t worth the squeeze with catching them out of the air.

[sevenperforce]

13 hours ago, tater said:

@sevenperforce, the last launch at a similar time of day to the one tonight was apparently quite visible from the mid Atlantic states... might be worth getting up at omg-30.

Massive rainstorm here so I wouldn't have been able to see anything, but thanks!

[tater]

17 minutes ago, sevenperforce said:

Massive rainstorm here so I wouldn't have been able to see anything, but thanks!

We're having gusts to 60mph, while snowing here, lol.

[zolotiyeruki]

19 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

Space Shuttle also had the SpaceLab, which was amusingly complex being compared to the dimensional expectations.

Skylab and all Soviet stations and modules are fuel tanks with windows. So, the Starship could be a 9-m wide one.

I LOVE the idea of using spent SS's as a space station, but question the cost.  I mean, the whole raison d'etre of Starship is reusability, which entails bringing it back down to earth to save money.  If you just leave it in LEO, that sorta defeats the purpose.  Is there a way to loft large, empty vessels into orbit AND bring SS back to earth?   Deployable somethings like  that inflatable module they put on the ISS?  Some way to decouple the engines and avionics from the tanks, and then recover the expensive bits? 

Or, since they're currently just disposing of F9 second stages, maybe they could modify that design so it could dock with some sort of truss, and the F9S2 tanks could be finished into hotel rooms.  Eh, if you're going through that much trouble, it'd make more sense to just load four cylindrical, purpose-built, pre-finished hotel room modules into a SS and launch 'em that way.

Or just design your new space station to use 8m-diameter modules, and launch 'em on SS.

[kerbiloid]

It's OK, "long-living" is "reusable without intermediate landings".

Also the fuel tanks are nothing special in sense of reusability, they are just tanks.
Engines, mechanics, and autopilot decide.

And there are both "wet workshop" (yet never implemented) and "dry workshop" (Skylab and all Soviet ones).

Edited March 24, 2021 by kerbiloid

[sevenperforce]

1 hour ago, kerbiloid said:

It's OK, "long-living" is "reusable without intermediate landings".

Also the fuel tanks are nothing special in sense of reusability, they are just tanks.
Engines, mechanics, and autopilot decide.

And there are both "wet workshop" (yet never implemented) and "dry workshop" (Skylab and all Soviet ones).

Wet workshop sounds good in theory but it is just very hard to implement in practice. Building living space inside a tank on orbit is...challenging. You can launch with the prefab living space attached to the top, then vent the propellant and slide the living space into the tank, but the living space would need to be inside a fairing anyway and so at that point just launch the whole dang thing as a monolith.

One of Von Braun's ideas was to build "floors" into the interior of the terminal stage, with all of the floors being built out of an open grid which would be lightweight and would also allow the propellant to drain through. That is only a slight drop in propellant capacity and at least, gives you a rough sort of internal organization. But then -- what do you even do with the space?

[magnemoe]

1 hour ago, sevenperforce said:

Wet workshop sounds good in theory but it is just very hard to implement in practice. Building living space inside a tank on orbit is...challenging. You can launch with the prefab living space attached to the top, then vent the propellant and slide the living space into the tank, but the living space would need to be inside a fairing anyway and so at that point just launch the whole dang thing as a monolith.

One of Von Braun's ideas was to build "floors" into the interior of the terminal stage, with all of the floors being built out of an open grid which would be lightweight and would also allow the propellant to drain through. That is only a slight drop in propellant capacity and at least, gives you a rough sort of internal organization. But then -- what do you even do with the space?

Yes, now it might be nice on future and larger space stations. First use is for sports in an large open space. Second is as an sort of large dry dock for repairing stuff in shirtsleeves. 
This must obviously have an huge door in one end.
However as other say you can just launch something with an SS. 

However especially on mars I guess many of the cargo landers will be broken down for parts and one or two will become permanent fuel tanks. 

[Jacke]

1 hour ago, sevenperforce said:

One of Von Braun's ideas was to build "floors" into the interior of the terminal stage, with all of the floors being built out of an open grid which would be lightweight and would also allow the propellant to drain through. That is only a slight drop in propellant capacity and at least, gives you a rough sort of internal organization. But then -- what do you even do with the space?

Grid floors were also part of the original "wet laboratory" design of Skylab's modified S-IVB for launching on a Saturn IB.  It was later replaced with the "dry laboratory" design launched on a Saturn V which with the lower mass Skylab replacing the S-IVB.

[kerbiloid]

Spoiler

  

44 minutes ago, magnemoe said:

many of the cargo landers will be broken down for parts and one or two will become permanent fuel tanks. 

Or fuel tubs. Depends on landing speed.

 

[magnemoe]

1 hour ago, kerbiloid said:

  Hide contents

  

Or fuel tubs. Depends on landing speed.

 

You would need an pressure container, steel plates is still useful.
But you don't want your colony to look too much like settlements in Fallout  

[zolotiyeruki]

3 hours ago, sevenperforce said:

One of Von Braun's ideas was to build "floors" into the interior of the terminal stage, with all of the floors being built out of an open grid which would be lightweight and would also allow the propellant to drain through. That is only a slight drop in propellant capacity and at least, gives you a rough sort of internal organization. But then -- what do you even do with the space?

Well, I suppose all the accoutrements could be packed  into the payload section, as you'd do with a moving truck, and then unpacked into the larger volume once it's in orbit and the fuel has been vented.  It'd be  a bit like building a house from the inside.

[sevenperforce]

Well this is mildly confusing.

Quote

Thank you for applying as a crew candidate for the dearMoon mission.
We are pleased to inform you that you have passed the Initial Screening with flying colors. As such, we would like to provide details about the next phase. 

For this phase of the screening process, you will be asked to shoot and submit a one minute video. Please follow the instructions below.

-The video must be less than one minute.
-Refrain from using songs that infringe on copyrights.
-Also remember to introduce yourself at the beginning of the video.

A video.....about what?

[Ultimate Steve]

21 minutes ago, sevenperforce said:

Well this is mildly confusing.

A video.....about what?

I got no such email, so it looks like I didn't get through, unless they aren't sending them out all at once. I'd imagine the video would be about introducing yourself and explaining why you would be a good candidate for the mission, but they definitely should have elaborated on that.

[tater]

50 minutes ago, sevenperforce said:

A video.....about what?

Heaving the capstan to release the Dragon parachute?

[Elthy]

Isnt Dearmoon about creative inspirations of a moon flyby? It makes sense to vet participants according to their creative video ideas, giving them as little limitations as necessary...

[sevenperforce]

41 minutes ago, Ultimate Steve said:

I got no such email, so it looks like I didn't get through, unless they aren't sending them out all at once. I'd imagine the video would be about introducing yourself and explaining why you would be a good candidate for the mission, but they definitely should have elaborated on that.

Very possible they are going out staggered.

I would just expect SOME sort of direction. Yuzaku says he wants artists and others who will create inspiration, right? So, what is the video supposed to highlight? "Tell us one thing in your life that excites you and why" or "Create a video that shows some of your past work" or "Tell us why this mission inspires you" or just "Introduce yourself and tell us what you do". Any of those would be great. But not having any direction means their submissions are going to be all over the place.

24 minutes ago, Elthy said:

Isnt Dearmoon about creative inspirations of a moon flyby? It makes sense to vet participants according to their creative video ideas, giving them as little limitations as necessary...

I think the distinction is between limitation and direction. If the goal is to vet and compare applicants then you need to arrive at a coherent vision. It doesn't make sense to compare one person who made a video about their past art with another person who made a video introducing themselves to another person who talked about their ideas for the flyby.

There shouldn't be any limitations on the output, but giving direction at this stage would just be common sense.

[RCgothic]

Gantry crane is *finally* installed!

Honestly expected it be installed last October. I wonder if this was the major hold up for Superheavy production, or if it just got downgraded to a lower priority relative to more starships?

Edited March 25, 2021 by RCgothic

[StrandedonEarth]

40 minutes ago, RCgothic said:

Gantry crane is *finally* installed!

Honestly expected it be installed last October. I wonder if this was the major hold up for Superheavy production, or if it just got downgraded to a lower priority relative to more starships?

Perhaps they were waiting for it to be manufactured, assembled, and shipped, while hampered by COVID delays 

[kerbiloid]

Musk has installed the Hangar Extender mod, and see what happened.

[sevenperforce]

Playing around a little more with Starship legs.

Selling points:

• Legs are fully stowed within the skirt for launch
• All vertical loads transfer through the current load paths
• Full three-point self-leveling capability for each leg
• Significant ground clearance
• Wide stance
• Tilt damping with good load path

The trick is to have U-shaped feet so that the diagonal member can extend through the gap while stowed and during deployment.

[RCgothic]

SN11 may hop tomorrow:

 

 

[Ultimate Steve]

I am not asking for a delay, but if it does get delayed to Monday and goes off without a hitch that would be an amazing birthday present!

[CatastrophicFailure]

This is... interesting...