totm nov 2023 SpaceX Discussion Thread

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

3 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

enough money to buy an equivalent property

That is certainly something they can negotiate with SX about - but has no bearing on the 'fairness' or 'appropriateness' of the offers received. 

That is not how valuation works.  Property value is all location, location, location - whether Gulf front in TX, lake front in Kuttowa, KY or beach front in Hermosa, CA. 

Edited December 9, 2021 by JoeSchmuckatelli

[RCgothic]

2 hours ago, Beccab said:

There's also Turksat 5B and CRS-24, so there'll be 31 falcon 9s this year excluding delays or almost one every 11 days. If they launch at least two of these and both land that will be 25 consecutive successful landings, breaking the previous record that was interrupted by Starlink 19 earlier this year

Also fun fact from checking the wikipedia page, only one RTLS failed in the whole program out of 25 attempts and that was more than 3 years ago. Curious

Turksat 5B will be B1052.3, first F9 flight of previous FH side booster recently pictured with a 2nd stage (Not on the Wikipedia list of Falcon cores - may have to make an edit).

CRS-24 booster is as-yet unconfirmed. Doubt it'll be 1049.11. Could be 1069.1, but I'm leaning towards it being 1062.4.

Edit: And I may have just set a precedent for how FH conversions to F9 are dealt with in the Wikipedia table. Nice. :-D

Edited December 9, 2021 by RCgothic

[RCgothic]

Also, when B1052.3 flies it will set a couple of new records:

First FH side to be converted into an F9 instead of the other way around.

First Falcon B5 core to be converted.

Longest turnaround between flights - 907 days to Dec18th and counting

[RealKerbal3x]

The year has absolutely flown by.

[RCgothic]

Check out this amazing piece of paper:

 

 

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

17 minutes ago, RCgothic said:

Check out this amazing piece of paper:

 

 

Fair - who wants to work that hard right before xmas.  Do it early Jan

 

[MKI]

6 minutes ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

Fair - who wants to work that hard right before xmas.

No one... except maybe Elon Musk, but then I think even he understands others wont want to grinding out during the holidays. 

[tater]

 

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

2 hours ago, RCgothic said:

Check out this amazing piece of paper:

 

 

The twit-grumble says Q1, but the dates show 12/20 - 03/01... so isn't Dec still possible?  What part am I missing?

[RCgothic]

16 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

The twit-grumble says Q1, but the dates show 12/20 - 03/01... so isn't Dec still possible?  What part am I missing?

The FAA environmental assessment isn't due until Dec 31st. Then there's also FAA launch license.

Assuming those both come through together Jan 1st is possibly the earliest opportunity.

But I expect Superheavy B4 proving will take longer than 3 weeks from here anyway.

Edited December 10, 2021 by RCgothic

[SunlitZelkova]

12 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

That is certainly something they can negotiate with SX about - but has no bearing on the 'fairness' or 'appropriateness' of the offers received. 

That is not how valuation works.  Property value is all location, location, location - whether Gulf front in TX, lake front in Kuttowa, KY or beach front in Hermosa, CA. 

Hence why I wrote "whether that is "correct" or not is a different question".

If it was just empty land, I would agree, but they are, for all intents and purposes, forcing people out of their homes to expand their (rocket) factory. If they are going to do that, it is only natural people will expect to receive enough money to buy an equivalent property, regardless of its "real" value, and regardless of how things normally go in the real estate business. So I don't think their demands are particularly abnormal or outrageous.

Edited December 10, 2021 by SunlitZelkova

[tater]

Property values can change for all sorts of reasons. Anyone buying property with empty lots all around has no guarantees. In a beach setting, any empty lot could easily become high rise condos. If you want more of a guarantee that your home/view/etc will not change, buy where all the lots are already built up within line of sight, or buy enough land that it doesn't matter who builds next door, next door is far away.

We've been thinking about some cool land between here and Colorado maybe, I don't even consider lots less than 100 acres, and only that small if it has a hill so I can potentially point any house I put there away from seeing anyone.

 

[sevenperforce]

1 hour ago, tater said:

Property values can change for all sorts of reasons. Anyone buying property with empty lots all around has no guarantees. In a beach setting, any empty lot could easily become high rise condos. If you want more of a guarantee that your home/view/etc will not change, buy where all the lots are already built up within line of sight, or buy enough land that it doesn't matter who builds next door, next door is far away.

Agreed.

One may argue private property is inherently theft, but that's beside the point. There are no guarantees in real estate. What happens if you buy two beachfront vacation properties (like this woman) and then something happens that makes people not want to ever rent in that area? That's the nature of investments: they carry risk.

If you invest $100,000 in real estate believing it will be worth $500,000 in 20 years, and then 5 years later there's a flood and the entire property is ruined, insurance doesn't pay you the $500,000 you were hoping for; they reimburse you for the $100,000 you put into it (and probably a little more for 5 years of appreciation). Same with eminent domain condemnation.

 

[Beccab]

Booster quick disconnect has its shuttle style cover, and has been recorded moving for the first time

Edit: the gif doesn't restart for some reason, you have to refresh the page

Edited December 10, 2021 by Beccab

[sevenperforce]

1 hour ago, Beccab said:

Booster quick disconnect has its shuttle style cover, and has been recorded moving for the first time

Edit: the gif doesn't restart for some reason, you have to refresh the page

Boy, I sure was wrong about the external engines not needing GSE for startup.

Although I suppose I was right about the igniter being localized to the engine. The GSE provides press gas for startup but it doesn’t provide ignition.

[magnemoe]

33 minutes ago, sevenperforce said:

Boy, I sure was wrong about the external engines not needing GSE for startup.

Although I suppose I was right about the igniter being localized to the engine. The GSE provides press gas for startup but it doesn’t provide ignition.

Very likely, the igniter itself is pretty light weight and instrumental in starting the engine. It would not make sense to have an other ignition system for the outer engines. 
On the other hand using internal or external or internal gas to spin up the outer engines is just plumbing. 

[tater]

 

[FleshJeb]

21 hours ago, tater said:

We've been thinking about some cool land between here and Colorado maybe, I don't even consider lots less than 100 acres, and only that small if it has a hill so I can potentially point any house I put there away from seeing anyone.

I've been in rural land development for most of my adult life, but this is off-topic so I'll spoiler it:

Spoiler

Apologies if you already know these things:

First priority: Make sure the land has good potential for well and septic, and preserve those areas. Without them, the property is next to worthless. I've seen a multi-million dollar parcel devalued because the owner decided to hop on the tractor and grade out some building pads and a driveway without permits. They were right in the middle of the only suitable soil for a septic system on the entire parcel. The "muh property" attitude ruined 20 years of this guy's dreams. (This was before my firm was involved.)

Second: On hilly land, it can be darn near impossible to grade a driveway in that meets local jurisdictional slope requirements. I've seen a narrow, steep parcel that the owner wanted to put a house at the top of, that would have required driveway switchbacks over 1/4 of the area of the parcel. 15 years later, and there's still no house on the property.

Third: Property boundary / access rights. You may want to get a boundary retracement done as a condition of purchase, and split the cost with the owner. It may be that the current owner is used to accessing the parcel across a neighbor's land because it's convenient, but that doesn't necessarily confer an access easement. If there's any other place to get from a public road onto the parcel, even if it's much more difficult and expensive to construct, the neighbor can  deny access via the convenient route.

Of course, all this is dependent on state and county codes, and individual geography, so hire professionals and listen to them. Don't hire the up-front cheapest firms, it will almost certainly cost you more money in the long run. Also, hire civil/survey people that work in that county a lot. Local expertise is invaluable.

 

[Beccab]

For the people who were interested in the lego Starship Superheavy posted last week, the instructions for it are now on Rebrickable! 3029 parts total
https://rebrickable.com/mocs/MOC-94616/0rig0/spacex-starship-super-heavy-saturn-v-scale/#details

Edited December 11, 2021 by Beccab

[tater]

 

[Beccab]

The spacex crane was moved to the OLM and has been hooked to the booster adapter, plus yesterday 16 counterweights were brought there and SPMTs brought near B4. Looks like Booster 4 will be moved to the launch mount to begin the test campaign in the next couple days

[tater]

 

 

[Beccab]

Bad news: according to insiders, B4 has been slated to only be used for ground testing (culminating in a 29 engines SF), but not for the orbital flight: that is reserved for... Booster 8.

Less bad news: Booster 4 is ready for the ground testing, B5 was completed already and B6 is an already built test tank. With B7 unlikely to be built at all ala SN14 or S19, B8 isn't too far off considering its thrust puck was spotted a few months ago. Oh, and about that, B8 will have 33 engines instead of 29, meaning Starship will always fly with the max engines now

With some luck, by the time B4 completes the testing campaign B8 or at least S21 will be ready to start their own. No clue on what engines with fly on B8, if Raptor 1 or Raptor 2s

 

Edit: oh, looks like I missed some info on the Raptor production problem that was shared a couple days ago. Quoting the whole of it:

"Not a lot of it [referring to how much of Raptor is additively manufactured].  Combustion chamber is cast, milled and lined.

All turbines and bearings are cast, cut and milled.

Exhaust bells are cut from plate, forge formed, milled and lined.

CH4 and O2 exhaust manifolds are cast and milled.

Ancillary additive formed components only include propellant valves, CH4 turbopump housing  and parts of the injector system.

Edit:  The time taken is in the milling and polishing, which even 3D components require. Additive components are not yet proven in extreme high pressure, high temperature environments.  There are other 3D printed rocket engines (Rutherford) that have been proven, though they operate under far less pressure and temperature extremes, and not with SX500 alloy, which can't be additive printed due to casting, tempering and annealing procedures that requires the production of a single 'supercrystal'."

"Milling has to be micron perfect to allow correct and full annealing of the copper liner and coolant channels to the chamber body.

I might add, that there is an additive process under testing at Spacex, with TBC's (Thermal Barrier Coatings).  Certain parts have been plasma sprayed with YSZ (Yttrium Stabilized Zirconia). Studies of insulation and heat flow are in process.  You may have noticed that some of the rocket nozzles have a white inner lining. This is YSZ, and should assist in reducing the heat load in regenerative cooling moving forward, and especially with Raptor 2.
  
These are some of the issues SpaceX has to surmount with the current Raptor production. It's slow because of the very fine tolerances that have to be achieved, assembly is slow because each one is team built, and differences occur because of that. 

Design has reached the limit of the engines modeled capability, and redesign is lacking due to absence of full duration in operation testing. They've blown up a few at McGregor, and blasted the deflection berms to pieces in testing, but a limit has been reached with the current model, which Elon reckons can be improved upon.  Hence Elon's frustration of trying to get to the magical ISP and thrust numbers. 

Heads have not exactly rolled with the recent exodus, more of a mutual disassociation."

 

Edited December 13, 2021 by Beccab

[Beccab]

Another information I forgot to add to complete the picture, there have been various Raptor 2 static fires in the last days at the horizontal stand at McGregor, usually lasting for 2 minutes

[Meecrob]

Oh? I had no idea there was Raptor 2 hardware in testing!