totm nov 2023 SpaceX Discussion Thread

[kspbutitscursed]

On 9/21/2023 at 12:03 AM, magnemoe said:

I guess 5 who is their current permit as I understand, might be more as they have plenty hardware stacked up already

remeber they are building an launch pad at kennedy space center btw so they probably wont have those issues at the KSC

[tater]

 

[RCgothic]

NSF stream with Eric Berger last night was pretty certain no starship flight before late October at the earliest.

 

 

[darthgently]

Interesting angle.  Who else is cranking out 3 second stages a week?

 

[Elthy]

They can build 3 second stages a week because they dont have to build mnay first stages, including engines.

[darthgently]

7 hours ago, Elthy said:

They can build 3 second stages a week because they dont have to build mnay first stages, including engines.

When playing KSP I am hesitant to deorbit and destroy any thing I've managed to get into orbit.  The price has been paid to get it there, right? 

It would be cool if those second stages could slowly, and efficiently, autonomously rendezvous over time and latch together then at some point perhaps at least the engines could be recovered and maybe the rest could be repurposed ala Skylab at some future date.  A poor man's orbital reef? 

Anyway, at least recover the engines

Edited September 26, 2023 by darthgently

[magnemoe]

2 hours ago, darthgently said:

When playing KSP I am hesitant to deorbit and destroy any thing I've managed to get into orbit.  The price has been paid too get it there, right? 

It would be cool if those second stages could slowly, and efficiently, autonomously rendezvous over time and latch together then at some point perhaps at least the engines could be recovered and maybe the rest could be repurposed ala Skylab at some future date.  A poor man's orbital reef? 

Anyway, at least recover the engines

Problem is that in KSP you tend to launch to 80-100 km  equatorial orbit and in KSP 1 with mods working in space was pretty easy. Not so true IRL so many orbits, more so no efficient way to recover except starship who makes falcon 9 pretty redundant outside being an very reliable rocket, now I could see someone making an recoverable 3rd stage for Starship launching satellites into GEO without refueling Startship. 

[CatastrophicFailure]

2 hours ago, darthgently said:

When playing KSP I am hesitant to deorbit and destroy any thing I've managed to get into orbit.  The price has been paid too get it there, right? 

It would be cool if those second stages could slowly, and efficiently, autonomously rendezvous over time and latch together then at some point perhaps at least the engines could be recovered and maybe the rest could be repurposed ala Skylab at some future date.  A poor man's orbital reef? 

Anyway, at least recover the engines

Not worth the investment, financial and every other sense. Remember, they nixed plans to recover second stages already because they just can’t justify the effort needed for any kind of recovery. Space debris is a real concern also. 

The answer to most “they should just…” or “why don’t they..?” questions is STARSHIP. That’s it. That’s the solution. That’s the end result of a couple decades of rocket-building experience as to how to do everything better. 

[farmerben]

A space tug that picked up abandoned stages and put them in a graveyard orbit would be awesome.  The best graveyard orbits are a few hundred miles beyond geosynchronous.  That takes a lot of delta-V but since you're riding in the Earth's magnetic field, you can get all your inclination changes using electromagnets.

[Nuke]

10 hours ago, darthgently said:

When playing KSP I am hesitant to deorbit and destroy any thing I've managed to get into orbit.  The price has been paid to get it there, right? 

It would be cool if those second stages could slowly, and efficiently, autonomously rendezvous over time and latch together then at some point perhaps at least the engines could be recovered and maybe the rest could be repurposed ala Skylab at some future date.  A poor man's orbital reef? 

Anyway, at least recover the engines

im a strong proponent for orbital junkyards. mainly from a salvage and repair standpoint. even the scrap is valuable because it is in a mostly refined state. materials already on orbit are more valuable than those launched from the ground from an energy standpoint. and financially if you have an on orbit economy established. 

how it would work is debatable. i like the idea of using a large unpressurized low speed centrifuge to contain space junk. this could serve as a counterbalance to a smaller high speed centrifuge for crew and workshops. also a zero g workshops and maybe an industrial centrifuge for a foundry. the whole thing would need to be either nuclear powered or have a massive solar array and radiator array.

Edited September 27, 2023 by Nuke

[mikegarrison]

On 9/25/2023 at 6:15 PM, darthgently said:

Interesting angle.  Who else is cranking out 3 second stages a week?

 

"Manufacturer extraordinaire"? I mean, Boeing builds 737s at a rate of more than one per day. And don't try to tell me a Falcon second stage is harder to build than a commercial airliner.

[mikegarrison]

On 9/20/2023 at 10:48 PM, CatastrophicFailure said:

 

 

SpaceX chose to locate in the middle of a wildlife sanctuary.

Chose. To.

Maybe if they had done a better job of not setting the place on fire or covering it with debris then they would be given the benefits of more trust.

Edited September 27, 2023 by mikegarrison

[tater]

Maybe with the caveat, "for a rocket company?"

A current 737 costs what, ~$120M? So slightly more than an RS-25 costs, and AJR will make maybe 1 a year?

In general I suppose it's because there's no reason to actually make them at real rates of production.

6 minutes ago, mikegarrison said:

SpaceX chose to locate in the middle of a wildlife sanctuary.

Chose. To.

Maybe if they had done a better job of not setting the place on fire or covering it with debris then they would be given the benefits of more trust.

Where else in the US is there east facing coast that is not wildlife sanctuary, that is also several miles from built up areas, houses, etc?

South Padre Island is virtually the same terrain, except a majority of it is now paved over, covered with houses/hotels/etc. As is the rest of the coast, literally everywhere in the US.

Maybe if they had eminent domain they could have done better. Course then they'd have to make it more naturalistic by tearing down all the crap already built on whatever wetland it was.

Edited September 27, 2023 by tater

[mikegarrison]

I'm just awfully tired of people complaining that regulators are doing their jobs.

[Terwin]

5 minutes ago, mikegarrison said:

SpaceX chose to locate in the middle of a wildlife sanctuary.

Chose. To.

Maybe if they had done a better job of not setting the place on fire or covering it with debris then they would be given the benefits of more trust.

Would you like to point out a better site they could have used?

Remember:

* on the Gulf Coast as far south as possible

* little or no near-by housing/businesses

* available for sale with enough space

Note: that first point is by far the most important 

[mikegarrison]

Just now, Terwin said:

Would you like to point out a better site they could have used?

Remember:

* on the Gulf Coast as far south as possible

* little or no near-by housing/businesses

* available for sale with enough space

Note: that first point is by far the most important 

I know why they chose to locate there, but the fact remains. They chose this. So stop whining about it, please.

[tater]

Just checked, zero land in that north running shore in TX. So TX is out.

Nothing at all in FL.

Looks like Paulsen (former Sec Treas) owns a suitable plot in GA—Little St. Simons Island—though it's grossly more pristine than Boca Chica from a wildlife standpoint, and worse, an island. Much larger than the 18 acre launch area at Starbase, it's 10,000 acres. Making roads/bridges for trucks etc would have way more impacts though. And he'd have to want to sell it. Might be a few more swampy islands, but really you'd prefer mainland.

Sticking with mainland, and merely scanning up the coast... nothing in the US whatsoever.

 

NASA and the USAF (as well as the Army, and USN, which tested their rockets at the cape as well) got around the problem by simply taking the land, and doing whatever they felt like doing (many, many boom booms early) with no such oversight at all. Then after the fact turned the 150,000+ acres in to a wildlife reserve.

So step one, be able to do what you like—at implicit gunpoint.

Edited September 27, 2023 by tater

[tater]

The point IMHO is not available land, the point is that every other inch of coast is covered with environmental impact that if not acutely worse (the beach houses are not exploding at a high rate, and if so, they would be small explosions), the impacts are constant. The parking lot at the KSC visitor center (just the parking lot, I measured it during a previous discussion in this thread), is about the size of either the launch area, or maybe all of Starbase combined (?). I was there last year. Covered with cars. Every time it rains (often, FL), oil from the asphalt and dripped from cars runs off into the grass. Plus coolant. And rubber particulate and brake dust. How eco-friendly! The entire coast is like that.

The issue is not "regulation," the issue is what exactly is FWS doing? If they need 30-130 days, are their staff members taking data 8 hours a day at Boca Chica? Are they brushing up on their organic chemistry so the regulators can do calculations on impacts? What exactly are they doing to make a decision? Asking this question of government employees seems entirely reasonable as we are their bosses.

Spoiler

My guess is that the actual amount of "work" is vanishingly small, and they drag it out so that all such requests (everywhere in the US, not just there) look like it takes lots of hard work, protecting all their jobs.

 

Edited September 27, 2023 by tater

[darthgently]

1 hour ago, mikegarrison said:

"Manufacturer extraordinaire"? I mean, Boeing builds 737s at a rate of more than one per day. And don't try to tell me a Falcon second stage is harder to build than a commercial airliner.

Industry context and market scale matter.  To be more fair, Musk has specifically used aircraft production and reuse metrics as SpaceX's target bar.   A more honest comparison might be how many employees per tonnage produced per unit time?  I don't know, apples and oranges to a large degree.

Edited September 27, 2023 by darthgently

[tater]

No rocket company (yet) is at anything like the scale of Boeing building aircraft. It's not a fair comparison, the market is so very small. Google says airline mfg industry is ~$300B/yr. Commercial launch is maybe 1/50 of that.

 

Re: fish and wildlife service, the supposed concern is runoff. Of water, and rocket exhaust that is... water and CO2. I would bet money more nasty stuff drips off airliners into wetlands (many coastal airports are in/around wetland areas, since it's a good place to put those cause people don't like being under final approach anyway) in a day than would enter the Boca Chica area if SS exploded. Like more probably drips off planes in an hour (summing all airports). Maybe a few minutes.

Same with just road traffic. My own driveway is concrete, and periodically when I am watering plants I spray the driveway (don't have a power washer, though that looks cool from vids I have seen). The leading edge of the water running down (highly sloped near the top) is BLACK. Presumably brake dust and tire residue. Some oil here and there (propane truck delivers and drips, my cars mostly don't). Every driveway/road in the country is like that.

Edited September 27, 2023 by tater

[darthgently]

Since KSC was developed the EPA has effectively declared nearly *all* coastal areas as protected coastal wetlands to a large degree.  The same areas that the same EPA appears to think will be under salty ocean water in a handful of decades anyway.  Wetlands are also the biggest source of natural methane, major greenhouse gas, which is reduced with draining and development.  Cognitive dissonance

[tater]

I'd prefer to see all the small impacts also dealt with vs concentrating on some small "park" that is supposed to be locked in time, while the 5000 sqft beach houses down the road have oil dripping from their cars, pesticides sprayed to keep the skeeters away from their ginormous patios, etc, are completely ignored. If there's a standard for X ppm contamination, then apply it to everyone on the coast (or everywhere). Smaller changes that affect the 99.999999999999999999% of coastal land area that is NOT launch facilities would likely have a far bigger impact.

One of the guys on NSF who either still has a house in Boca Chica or sold his house to SpaceX said that all the plants around there are invasive (he lived there for 10+ years, hiked around a lot, etc). Not at the houses, in the wetlands. Said it was all introduced stuff that spread everywhere. That's true with a lot of land that looks pristine here in NM I know. Started with the Spanish, and has had a few hundred years to take over.

Edited September 27, 2023 by tater

[NFUN]

43 minutes ago, darthgently said:

Since KSC was developed the EPA has effectively declared nearly *all* coastal areas as protected coastal wetlands to a large degree.  The same areas that the same EPA appears to think will be under salty ocean water in a handful of decades anyway.  Wetlands are also the biggest source of natural methane, major greenhouse gas, which is reduced with draining and development.  Cognitive dissonance

okay maybe mike has a point

[tater]

I'm fine with them having to meet standards. I'd just like the regulators to "show their work." Not just the final report, I actually want to know how they came to the conclusion they came to, because I have a feeling much is just "gut" which could be bad in both directions (they could approve something they shouldn't, or reject something they shouldn't) without understanding why.

This should be true for everything in government that is not strictly classified (or dealing with the personal information of citizens, obviously). Total transparency. If a supervisor can walk into a government office and look over the shoulders of the people doing the work, so should the supervisor's bosses—The People.

 

 

Edited September 27, 2023 by tater

[Ultimate Steve]

I don't think the issue is that the FWS has a say. I think the main question is why they are being brought in now and not earlier. An item with a four month lead time should have been started four or five months ago, so why did it slip through the cracks until now?

Is this a "Surprise! We, the FWS, need four months to review this and we didn't tell you until now!" situation or a "We, the EIS guys, did not include the FWS stuff in the requirements" situation, or an "Oops, we, SpaceX, forgot to involve the FWS until now" situation?

I don't know if I can assign blame until I know if this is a SpaceX thing, an EIS thing, an FWS thing, or something else.