totm nov 2023 SpaceX Discussion Thread

[RCgothic]

24 minutes ago, magnemoe said:

The BN3/SN20 pairing makes sense so does BN4/SN22 but BN7/SN24 indicate they will dispose all the first 5 superheavy first stages. 
Find it weird if they will not try to land them  earlier. Yes they might land and simply reuse the engines. 

When they can reuse the booster stages might be determined by availability of Phobos and Deimos.

Alternatively, they may be allowed to attempt to land at Starbase after demonstrating a successful soft landing in the gulf.

Starship / Booster pairings are probably just planning for the worst case. If they start managing to recover boosters I'm sure the pairings will change.

[magnemoe]

1 hour ago, RCgothic said:

When they can reuse the booster stages might be determined by availability of Phobos and Deimos.

Alternatively, they may be allowed to attempt to land at Starbase after demonstrating a successful soft landing in the gulf.

Starship / Booster pairings are probably just planning for the worst case. If they start managing to recover boosters I'm sure the pairings will change.

As I understand they plan to land superheavy back at the launch site, I assume Phobos and Deimos is for landing starship.
That will make some sense as they can stay higher up over land coming in for landing. 

Fist landing will be an splashdown, I assume this is to verify that it can do the boost back and land at an specific location. 
And yes having spare boosters makes sense. Once they have an stack they are likely to stop. 
That is unless they improve the booster design.

Edited May 17, 2021 by magnemoe

[YNM]

1 hour ago, magnemoe said:

As I understand they plan to land superheavy back at the launch site, I assume Phobos and Deimos is for landing starship.

Given the original EIS for Boca Chica, and in absence of any revisions to it (none that I can find so far), SS/SH orbital launch is technically not something they could do from the place.

So I think for the 1st SH launch we can expect some explosion.

[SpaceFace545]

At what stage will spacex for real build starship? Like actually build the thing. 

[Jacke]

17 hours ago, Nothalogh said:

If I recall correctly, Saturn originated as an ARPA project, and upon being showed the proposal, the DOD response was "A giant booster, LOLWUT? We want ICBMs".

The F-1 engine started development under a USAF contract in 1955.  Like the ABMA, Von Braun's team, it was eventually transferred to NASA.  Where the Saturn development was all done.  All this was for heavy LEO lift.

[Spaceception]

15 minutes ago, SpaceFace545 said:

At what stage will spacex for real build starship? Like actually build the thing. 

Since you're probably not just talking about a Starship that can reach orbit (which is right now), sometime before/by BN7/SN24 would be my guess. Which I'm think would be operational for LEO payload releases, seeing as it's supposed to be a major upgrade. The first tanker variant would have to be ready late this year or sometime next year, since they have have a contract for it, but it's like an extended fuel tank, so I don't imagine it'll be much more difficult once they're over the hump of orbit and payload release. The first ones for crew, probably a couple years, though there might be ground crew cabin mockups as they test the important systems of flight and landing on Starship's operational missions.

Edited May 17, 2021 by Spaceception

[Beccab]

Hm, maybe SN24 could have the first hot gas thrusters? They are needed for landing with bad weather iirc

[tater]

29 minutes ago, SpaceFace545 said:

At what stage will spacex for real build starship? Like actually build the thing. 

What are you talking about? Seriously.

They have built multiple SS test articles (not for orbital flight, and 3 vs 6 engines), and flown them to validate the landing. As has been said from the start by SpaceX, Starship is the hard part, the booster is the easy part. SN20—an orbital flight article* is literally under construction. BN3, the orbital booster is under construction:

*for safety reasons they will fly a vehicle capable of orbit in such a way as to test orbital reentry without putting it in a stable orbit. They don't want to be China.

 

What part of this is not transparent? We have no clue what BO is doing with NG right now, for example. We can literally pop onto youtube and see live video of SpaceX building Starships.

 

[RealKerbal3x]

I imagine that, in the eyes of critics, Starship won't be a 'real vehicle' until it's accomplished its aspirational design goal of landing humans on Mars.

In reality, it's a transformative vehicle even if it never gets that far.

[tater]

39 minutes ago, RealKerbal3x said:

I imagine that, in the eyes of critics, Starship won't be a 'real vehicle' until it's accomplished its aspirational design goal of landing humans on Mars.

In reality, it's a transformative vehicle even if it never gets that far.

Yeah, the goalposts constantly shift

 

There is a spectrum of SpaceX interest/concern.

Musk/SpaceX is a con man, and it's all a lie/conspiracy —— Starship will never work, they should stick to Falcons, etc —— Starship might work, who knows? —— Likely works at some level —— SpaceX to Mars! —— Cancel NASA and give them all the $$!!!!

Both extremes are loons.

I'm in the "likely works at some level" camp for the sake of transparency, though I have left out layers of nuance, and understated the lunacy at the extremes.

 

Edited May 17, 2021 by tater

[sh1pman]

6 minutes ago, tater said:

Likely works at some level —— SpaceX to Mars!

I’m in between these two.  Pretty confident it’ll work for LEO and Moon, but Mars mission is likely very far away. Colony is even less likely during our lifetime.

[tater]

22 minutes ago, sh1pman said:

I’m in between these two.  Pretty confident it’ll work for LEO and Moon, but Mars mission is likely very far away. Colony is even less likely during our lifetime.

Yeah, the colonize Mars stuff seems crazy to me given the fact we don't actually know 0.38g is long term desirable/acceptable for humans.

Regarding goalposts, SpaceX has rightfully just continued development. Them winning LSS was the least expected result—I think they know no one will take it seriously until it's actually flying. That's a sign of how really ambitious the vehicle is, honestly. If it was a giant F9, with the "starship" part an expended upper stage, it still lowers cost, and they still get some pushback to the tune of, "No one needs a rocket that big?" even if it cost less to fly than smaller rockets.

People forget that Musk gave an interview with Aviation Week last year (podcast). He said the marginal cost on F9 for a reuse launch for them was $15M, 2/3 of which was the upper stage. He said the goal was to reduce cost to orbit (with SS) by "1000% to 10,000%." He seemed confident SS would easily get to that first 10X reduction in cost from F9 at $1M/ton to $100k/ton.

Getting the cost from that $100/kg range down towards $10 will of course be the harder bit.

[southernplain]

2 hours ago, tater said:

SpaceX to Mars!

FWIW I think Mars as a goal is fine. Having somewhere to go, like the Moon in the 60's, and building out your capabilities to reach the goal is admirable. It provides direction and purpose to the whole endeavor, something clearly lacking in, for example, SLS/Orion; the capsule to nowhere.

It certainly seems like SpaceX will try and put a SS on Mars this decade. Even being able to put several tons of cargo down on Mars would be be an amazing accomplishment.

However, humans to Mars seems orders of magnitude more difficult. Moreover, while I can see deep-pocketed investors buying into SS/SH development for the obvious benefits for LEO/cislunar capabilities, I am not sure I see them buying into the Mars colonization game.

Maybe Elon will dump some billions of his Tesla holdings every year to pony up some of the cash for a Mars colonization vanity project.

[Elthy]

I think if he has problems getting the money he has to wait until the chinese are doing a manned moon landing or some other stunt. Then the USA will try to one-up them at any cost, while Musk has just the right rocket to sell.

[Beccab]

Do anyone know if Dragon was always made with the plan of eventually putting crew in there or was it just meant to be the cargo version at first?

[SpaceFace545]

Just now, Beccab said:

Do anyone know if Dragon was always made with the plan of eventually putting crew in there or was it just meant to be the cargo version at first?

It was initially Musk's "Mars rocket" hence red dragon. At first it needed to be proven safe so it was only flown as the cargo version till now. From the start it always had propulsive landing in mind but never actually executed till the red dragon plans. 

[tater]

10 minutes ago, Beccab said:

Do anyone know if Dragon was always made with the plan of eventually putting crew in there or was it just meant to be the cargo version at first?

It had a window, the talk was to make that the crew version initially I think.

8 minutes ago, SpaceFace545 said:

It was initially Musk's "Mars rocket" hence red dragon. At first it needed to be proven safe so it was only flown as the cargo version till now. From the start it always had propulsive landing in mind but never actually executed till the red dragon plans. 

No, it was not a Mars rocket.

Dragon was the result of COTS. The cargo version was because that's what NASA paid for. That it was pressurized meant they could theoretically turn it into a crew vehicle.

Crew Dragon the CCV contract. Shares a lot of Dragon, got a new aeroshell, LES, etc.

SpaceX talked about leveraging Dragon (when propulsive landing for it was still a thing) to land on Mars as a test for larger payloads to the surface. Sending people on a 1-way trip to mars in Dragon is... absurd (Mars One loons were fine with the concept for some reason, presumably they think people are kerbals).

 

[YNM]

5 hours ago, tater said:

[...] —— Starship might work, who knows? —— Likely works at some level —— [...]

More on this level myself, with Musk no longer babbling unnecessarily wrt. SpX's vehicles it's a lot easier to see that they really stick by the 'we'll set the goal there, will see whether we can actually make it' rather than 'no no it really will be like that by X time'. (though given CCDev it's understandable that NASA wanted timeline for their ride.)

There're still a lot of question to be asked, but you go from the rough designs first then slowly go to finer and finer details. Getting the whole concept of the vehicle works first is key. Then try to see if you can put payloads (and even human payloads) on it. Then we'll see where we can get from there. Obviously there are rough future ideas which the basic design tries to at least aligns itself by but you want everything to be down in the mud before moving the goalpost.

Edited May 17, 2021 by YNM

[SpaceFace545]

37 minutes ago, tater said:

(Mars One loons were fine with the concept for some reason, presumably they think people are kerbals).

But doesn't living on mars for eternity as a eunuch sound fun? Especially when your habitat is a clump of dragon capsules.

[SOXBLOX]

53 minutes ago, SpaceFace545 said:

It was initially Musk's "Mars rocket" hence red dragon. At first it needed to be proven safe so it was only flown as the cargo version till now. From the start it always had propulsive landing in mind but never actually executed till the red dragon plans. 

No. BFR was Musk's Mars rocket, from the beginning. Dragon is a demonstration and experiment. It allows SpaceX to gain experience with docking and manned flight.

[southernplain]

3 minutes ago, SpaceFace545 said:

But doesn't living on mars for eternity as a eunuch sound fun? Especially when your habitat is a clump of dragon capsules.

You could definitely find a small number of people who are fine with a one-way trip to Mars with a high chance (near certainty) of death.

Mars One (legitimately an insane organization) got hundreds of thousands of peoples attention and over 4000 actually paid to apply.

That doesn't serve the purpose of a civilizational level backup though. Musk et al. were never really pursuing that.

[magnemoe]

3 hours ago, southernplain said:

FWIW I think Mars as a goal is fine. Having somewhere to go, like the Moon in the 60's, and building out your capabilities to reach the goal is admirable. It provides direction and purpose to the whole endeavor, something clearly lacking in, for example, SLS/Orion; the capsule to nowhere.

It certainly seems like SpaceX will try and put a SS on Mars this decade. Even being able to put several tons of cargo down on Mars would be be an amazing accomplishment.

However, humans to Mars seems orders of magnitude more difficult. Moreover, while I can see deep-pocketed investors buying into SS/SH development for the obvious benefits for LEO/cislunar capabilities, I am not sure I see them buying into the Mars colonization game.

Maybe Elon will dump some billions of his Tesla holdings every year to pony up some of the cash for a Mars colonization vanity project.

An manned mars mission seems plausible with starship in say 15 years. 
Mission not colony but you might well get an permanent base as in an modified crew starship. 
The main issue here I think is to set up an robotic methane production plant who include setting up lots of solar panels and drill for water. 
Having the crew setting up this makes it much easier but also much more dangerous. 
Colony not in this century, but Mars become more like the south pole. 

And yes SS is an insane gamechanger in earth orbit. 100 ton to GEO with refueling. 

[tater]

If SpaceX wants to colonize Mars, more power to them. I have no desire to move there, lol. I like being outside too much. And good food. And I'd not want to not see my family in person again.

I also don't want to have to eat the bodies of my dead companions, lol.

That said, I think that Starship is a cool vehicle, and I think they could do Mars missions with it if they get it to work.

[cubinator]

3 hours ago, magnemoe said:

Problem with an Mars colony is that it makes no economic sense. 

Of course it doesn't. We're not going to Mars for the good of 'the economy'. We're going because humans want to go to space, and we can.

[StrandedonEarth]