totm nov 2023 SpaceX Discussion Thread

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

2 hours ago, tater said:

 

2-4 Raptors per day.

Why are we not talking about this:

 

"California factory will make Raptor Vacuum & new, experimental designs."

Anyone heard about these new / experimental rockets?

[Beccab]

1 minute ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

Why are we not talking about this:

 

"California factory will make Raptor Vacuum & new, experimental designs."

Anyone heard about these new / experimental rockets?

Imo, that's referring to:
-increasing general raptor thrust
-simplifying/reducing in weight the Rboost
-improving the Isp of the Rvac

[StrandedonEarth]

34 minutes ago, Beccab said:

Imo, that's referring to:
-increasing general raptor thrust
-simplifying/reducing in weight the Rboost
-improving the Isp of the Rvac

Yeah, that’s what I thought too. It makes sense to build the factory at Mcgregor near the test stands, as well as sidestepping opposition to building more than absolutely necessary in the BC/RGV wetlands. The Mcgregor factory will likely be a highly automated Alien Juggernaut-class factory churning out R2s (Threepio would be so jealous) while the older less-automated California plant does the more custom RVac and experimental builds.  

 

[magnemoe]

On 7/8/2021 at 5:20 PM, zolotiyeruki said:

I have to say that I'm extremely impressed with the packaging, i.e. how small they've been able to make the whole assembly.  I say this because at my last job I dealt with moving fluids through pipes, measuring flow, actuating vales, etc.  Valve actuators are big, and fast-acting actuators are really big.  Accurately measuring steady state fluid flow through a long, straight pipe is more difficult than you'd expect, and measuring rapidly-changing fluid flow through curved pipes in close proximity to pumps and turbines is simply an absurd problem.  And doing it in an extremely hot and violently vibrating tail end of a rocket?  Fuggetaboutit.

Seriously, my hat is off to those engine designers (and not just SpaceX's!)

Yes, but on an refinery an factory or even an oil platform you need room to test and swap parts. on an starship/ superheavy engine you simply swap the engines. 
A bit like the M1 tanks who also is designed to simply swap power pants  at the level that this tend to be how you do engine maintenance.

[tater]

6 minutes ago, magnemoe said:

Yes, but on an refinery an factory or even an oil platform you need room to test and swap parts. on an starship/ superheavy engine you simply swap the engines. 
A bit like the M1 tanks who also is designed to simply swap power pants  at the level that this tend to be how you do engine maintenance.

I think some of the launch table ground equipment seems specifically designed for engine replacement/access. Gonna be interesting to see.

 

[sevenperforce]

6 hours ago, tater said:

That pic needs to be larger:

That’s a whole lotta engine.

How many F-1s is that?

5 hours ago, RealKerbal3x said:

Thrust puck for Booster 4!

I reckon this thing is gonna come together quicker than we expect.

Looks like an Octaweb.

Just imagine, if that was the entire thrust structure by itself, you’d already be looking at a rocket with almost as much liftoff thrust as Falcon Heavy and significantly more payload, in a single stick. And that’s less than a third of the total engines on this stage. 

[tater]

2 minutes ago, sevenperforce said:

How many F-1s is that?

~3 (3 per F-1 for thrust, anyway). Not counting the Rvac (which is a rough analog of J-2 thrust wise).

[sevenperforce]

3 hours ago, Beccab said:

Imo, that's referring to:
-increasing general raptor thrust
-simplifying/reducing in weight the Rboost
-improving the Isp of the Rvac

This is a stupid question but I’m distracted by that SSTO thread, so....

The RVac is basically an SSME. It is optimized for a vacuum but it can fire at sea level.

What gets more payload to LEO: a notional expendable SSTO based on the RVac or one based on the RS-25?

8 minutes ago, tater said:

~3 (3 per F-1 for thrust, anyway). Not counting the Rvac (which is a rough analog of J-2 thrust wise).

I was counting the RVac lol, so......3.3 F-1s then. 

[tater]

16 minutes ago, sevenperforce said:

I was counting the RVac lol, so......3.3 F-1s then. 

It's kinda hard to wrap one's head around how powerful SS/SH will be.

Whenever that test flight is... I'm heading down there.

[tater]

I wasn't expecting this:

 

[Brotoro]

4 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

Why are we not talking about this:

 

"California factory will make Raptor Vacuum & new, experimental designs."

Anyone heard about these new / experimental rockets?

They also need to make the engines for the Lunar Lander Ship.

[StrandedonEarth]

1 hour ago, tater said:

It's kinda hard to wrap one's head around how powerful SS/SH will be.

Whenever that test flight is... I'm heading down there.

I wish I could head down there too. Would be a hell of a road trip!

[Nothalogh]

5 hours ago, tater said:

It's like that exchange with the former CEO of Boeing about Boeing building the first human Mars lander. Musk didn't tweet an infographic about how his idea was better, he replied, "Do it."

Poor Boeing, but it's hard to feel sorry for them after their clown tier performance they put on with Starliner.

[StrandedonEarth]

Makes me wonder, what kind of crowds do launches draw? IIRC Shuttle was always huge, and the first launches of F9, then F9Crew. While I imagine the routine launch crowds are smaller now, I'm sure F9H will always be huge.

So how big are these crowds? 20k? 50k? 100k? I would expect the first SH/SS orbital attempt to reach Woodstock proportions, if not for the somewhat remote location...

[tater]

1 hour ago, StrandedonEarth said:

I wish I could head down there too. Would be a hell of a road trip!

The last time I drove to South Padre was for a Spring break (a friend's parents kept a condo there). That was a helluva road trip as well

 

58 minutes ago, Nothalogh said:

Poor Boeing, but it's hard to feel sorry for them after their clown tier performance they put on with Starliner.

Fingers crossed it works well this time. My friend has been working with them (he's NASA) to try and get their ducks in a row.

[NFUN]

9 hours ago, tater said:

Meanwhile I've been looking at real estate in Italy. Rather eat pretty much anything chosen at random in Italy vs bugs (sorry ). Not the maggot cheese, though... nope.

I wish this were something I had not learned about

[CatastrophicFailure]

3 hours ago, StrandedonEarth said:

So how big are these crowds? 20k? 50k? 100k? I would expect the first SH/SS orbital attempt to reach Woodstock proportions, if not for the somewhat remote location...

Thaaaaats gonna rustle some… er, feathers. Boca is not equipped to handle a crowd like that, let’s hope they stay across the water. 
 

3 hours ago, NFUN said:

I wish this were something I had not learned about

Then whatever you do, do NOT google kiviak. 

[Scotius]

10 minutes ago, CatastrophicFailure said:

Thaaaaats gonna rustle some… er, feathers. Boca is not equipped to handle a crowd like that, let’s hope they stay across the water. 
 

Then whatever you do, do NOT google kiviak. 

Or balut.

[tater]

3 minutes ago, CatastrophicFailure said:

Thaaaaats gonna rustle some… er, feathers. Boca is not equipped to handle a crowd like that, let’s hope they stay across the water. 

The crowd would be at South Padre Island. Even back in the 80s they dealt with rather a lot of people there. I saw Mike Love (of Beach Boys) and Dean Torrence (of Jan and Dean) on the beach there. It was insanely packed.

 

[Beccab]

Raptor number 57 lifted up on Pad A for superheavy, installation very soon

Edit: A second raptor too! This is a surprise

 

Edited July 11, 2021 by Beccab

[RealKerbal3x]

Looks like 33 engines for Superheavy:

 

[tater]

So the inner ring is then 13 engines?

[Beccab]

1 minute ago, tater said:

So the inner ring is then 13 engines?

So it would seem, so they will go with either 1 4 8 or 5 8. Likely the first imo as they will start with 1 8 and it would be a more natural development from that

[tater]

The thrust structure already on site is pierced for 9. Guess we know about Booster 4 if that gets moved to the scrapyard.

[RealKerbal3x]

15 minutes ago, tater said:

The thrust structure already on site is pierced for 9. Guess we know about Booster 4 if that gets moved to the scrapyard.

It's likely that Booster 4 will still use 29 engines, they already have its thrust structure on site (as you said) and it should be plenty for a launch without payload.