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4 minutes ago, Elthy said:

Are there any hardpoints on S20 they could use for stacking with the chopsticks?

Yep, they are right under the front flaps. The location will probably change if they end up wanting to catch ships too, but for lifting it's good

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6 minutes ago, Elthy said:

Are there any hardpoints on S20 they could use for stacking with the chopsticks?

I'm guessing that S20 was designed and built before the idea of the chopsticks - so... no.  However, SX knows the internal structure of S20 - and likely has modeled where and how to grab it.  I'd think they could / would weld some on the outside if they thought it was necessary... but why?  It's a deep reef in the near future.

 

Edit: what @Beccab said

Edited by JoeSchmuckatelli
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4 minutes ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

I'm guessing that S20 was designed and built before the idea of the chopsticks - so... no.  However, SX knows the internal structure of S20 - and likely has modeled where and how to grab it.  I'd think they could / would weld some on the outside if they thought it was necessary... but why?  It's a deep reef in the near future.

 

Edit: what @Beccab said

The chopsticks have been planned since late 2020, long before S20 even begun construction. It was definitely built with them in mind.

Also: new NSF article, with pics of Raptor 2!

20220119-_DSC6701-Enhanced_Annotated_op3-wmarked-1170x762.jpg

https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2022/01/raptor-2-starbase-update/

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3 minutes ago, RealKerbal3x said:

The chopsticks have been planned since late 2020, long before S20 even begun construction. It was definitely built with them in mind.

Also: new NSF article, with pics of Raptor 2!

20220119-_DSC6701-Enhanced_Annotated_op3-wmarked-1170x762.jpg

https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2022/01/raptor-2-starbase-update/

Finally! Looks like a lot less spaghetti plumbing for sure. For comparison, from a year ago:

 

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1 hour ago, RyanRising said:

Odd - I would have figured they'd de-orbit the trunk along with the capsule. This was probably known info before, but it's new to me.

unlike apollo, the Dragon can maneuver without the "service module."

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7 hours ago, Rakaydos said:

unlike apollo, the Dragon can maneuver without the "service module."

Right, I'm aware of that - Dragon basically has its service module in the capsule. I would have thought they'd deorbit the trunk to avoid it becoming space debris, that's all.

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24 minutes ago, RyanRising said:

Right, I'm aware of that - Dragon basically has its service module in the capsule. I would have thought they'd deorbit the trunk to avoid it becoming space debris, that's all.

They lower the perigee before they dump the trunk, then the final burn is sans trunk. It probably comes down in a couple orbits at most.

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40 minutes ago, tater said:

They lower the perigee before they dump the trunk, then the final burn is sans trunk. It probably comes down in a couple orbits at most.

At least as of a while ago, that wasn’t the case:

Quote

The trunk will remain in orbit for well over a year and decay naturally before destructively entering Earth’s atmosphere.

https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2021/05/dragon-resilience-return-first-operational/
 

Additionally, the Demo-1 trunk apparently reentered earlier this year: https://aerospace.org/reentries/crew-dragon-demo-1-debris-id-44064-reentered

And the Crew-2 trunk is currently in a 413x404 km orbit: http://www.stuffin.space/?intldes=2021-030B

Maybe it’s some crew safety thing, but this doesn’t seem very responsible to me? There’s probably something I’m missing.

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32 minutes ago, RyanRising said:

At least as of a while ago, that wasn’t the case:

I thought I had read that a while ago... guess not then. Seems like they could lower perigee some, then finish, course that would take 2 orbits, and might mess up landing phasing.

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19 minutes ago, RCgothic said:

That's not exactly encouraging at this point.

They already have built 2 prototype cargo doors, and starlink is unlikely to fly on it before the end of the year at best. I doubt that is going to delay stuff much, if at all

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10 minutes ago, Rakaydos said:

Well, we know they they are ...loudly... discussing it. But once they decide, what do they need to do? order hinges and cut open a nosecone?

And design and build a payload dispenser that's easy to load and deploy through whatever door they end up with.

Edited by RCgothic
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