totm nov 2023 SpaceX Discussion Thread

[CatastrophicFailure]

Aaaaaand here’s the official. 

At least we have some kind of reason now. 

[tater]

 

[tater]

 

[tater]

Cool neopork render:

https://www.humanmars.net/2020/07/cutaway-diagram-of-spacex-lunar-starship.html

 

[RCgothic]

That really is a huge internal volume!

[CatastrophicFailure]

Finally some words from the Grand Poobah, he’s been awful quiet on such things lately. 

 

didn’t say they were particularly helpful words...

[RCgothic]

Well there goes this attempt on the turnaround record. I wonder if the new date will be within 9 days?

[magnemoe]

4 hours ago, tater said:

Cool neopork render:

https://www.humanmars.net/2020/07/cutaway-diagram-of-spacex-lunar-starship.html

 

Disagree quite a bit with this one. First first deck will be the cargo bay who can be opened to vacuum, pretty sure they want to bring rovers and other heavy equipment, an small drill rig would be nice. 
This has the large door with the elevator. you have an air lock in the cargo bay so you can access it then un-pressurized. you would access the air lock from top or an small ready room next to it. 
Original design had an docking port here but this might be changed for an second passenger elevator or just an winch if the main elevator fails. 
The horizontal shaft might still be in but the pusher elevator is too short and not really needed, you might have an winch instead and an hatch down to the cargo hold for easy and secondary access to cargo bay. 
No methane header tank, if they keep header tanks they would move the lox one down into the lox tank. 
 

[tater]

1 hour ago, magnemoe said:

Disagree quite a bit with this one. First first deck will be the cargo bay who can be opened to vacuum, pretty sure they want to bring rovers and other heavy equipment, an small drill rig would be nice. 

First deck is airlock. Door shown (cut in half by cutaway). No large rover, but that seems like a job for cargo starship. Specifics might be off—I'd expect the whole deck to be sealed off, but it looks OK.

 

1 hour ago, magnemoe said:

This has the large door with the elevator. you have an air lock in the cargo bay so you can access it then un-pressurized. you would access the air lock from top or an small ready room next to it. 

He has the airlock, and a large cargo/dressin g area to suit up. Biggest issue, IMO, is the large open center. This room will be dusty, that whole deck should be designed for dust mitigation. Doff suit, given the huge capacity of SS, I'd say a shower, then ladder upstairs (hatch). Separate filters to catch the duct down there.

1 hour ago, magnemoe said:

Original design had an docking port here but this might be changed for an second passenger elevator or just an winch if the main elevator fails. 

SpaceX renders don't show that.

 

1 hour ago, magnemoe said:

The horizontal shaft might still be in but the pusher elevator is too short and not really needed, you might have an winch instead and an hatch down to the cargo hold for easy and secondary access to cargo bay. 

I'm not sure what parts you are referring to here.

 

1 hour ago, magnemoe said:

No methane header tank, if they keep header tanks they would move the lox one down into the lox tank.

Dunno about what happened to that.

[RCgothic]

The header tanks are placed forward for aerodynamic reentry trim. Without re-entry they don't need to be all the way in the nose.

 

 

Edited July 14, 2020 by RCgothic

[tater]

6 hours ago, RCgothic said:

The header tanks are placed forward for aerodynamic reentry trim. Without re-entry they don't need to be all the way in the nose.

Yeah, just not seeing both in the cutaway.

(unless that's it at the very bottom?)

[magnemoe]

10 hours ago, tater said:

First deck is airlock. Door shown (cut in half by cutaway). No large rover, but that seems like a job for cargo starship. Specifics might be off—I'd expect the whole deck to be sealed off, but it looks OK.

 

He has the airlock, and a large cargo/dressin g area to suit up. Biggest issue, IMO, is the large open center. This room will be dusty, that whole deck should be designed for dust mitigation. Doff suit, given the huge capacity of SS, I'd say a shower, then ladder upstairs (hatch). Separate filters to catch the duct down there.

SpaceX renders don't show that.

 

I'm not sure what parts you are referring to here.

 

Dunno about what happened to that.

See the airlock with an elevator function. 
Still see it as an horrible wast not to use the cargo capacity for something useful then they can bring much heavier equipment. Lots of room for an 3-7 man crew here. 
The older starship models had an cargo bay below the crew area. 

And yes it will be dusty, you might want two layers here, first is the airlock, try to get rid of dust here. Then have an second dust trap in the suiting up area. 

I assumed the central circle was some sort of hydraulic elevator even if piston is way to short. 

Header tank might just an part of the methane tank, kept to keep models more similar. 

[tater]

4 minutes ago, magnemoe said:

The older starship models had an cargo bay below the crew area. 

Oh, the space above the tank dome. I forgot about that.

4 minutes ago, magnemoe said:

Still see it as an horrible wast not to use the cargo capacity for something useful then they can bring much heavier equipment. Lots of room for an 3-7 man crew here. 

The Apollo rover would easily fit on that elevator. I dunno, we will see what they come up with—this is some guy's render, not official SpaceX.

I still think a cargo version for the Moon should take those landing thrusters and rotate them to allow horizontal landing.

[tater]

 

[Terwin]

28 minutes ago, tater said:

Oh, the space above the tank dome. I forgot about that.

The Apollo rover would easily fit on that elevator. I dunno, we will see what they come up with—this is some guy's render, not official SpaceX.

I still think a cargo version for the Moon should take those landing thrusters and rotate them to allow horizontal landing.

I thought the plan was to have cargo modules attached at the bottom where they could be off-loaded with a fork-lift on the surface

[tater]

3 minutes ago, Terwin said:

I thought the plan was to have cargo modules attached at the bottom where they could be off-loaded with a fork-lift on the surface

The SpaceX render looks like it has 3 pods at the bottom. Of course unless the legs change, not sure how much room there is.

[cubinator]

2 hours ago, tater said:

 

This feels like the sort of tweet we get about once a year from SLS.....

[RealKerbal3x]

2 hours ago, cubinator said:

This feels like the sort of tweet we get about once a year from SLS.....

Except that it's actually necessary for the tweet to specify that it happened 'this morning'

[RCgothic]

 

More delays. Missing the breakneck pace of SN3 SN4 testing tbh.

[StrandedonEarth]

1 minute ago, RCgothic said:

More delays. Missing the breakneck pace of SN3 SN4 testing tbh.

They probably want to make sure this doesn't meet the same fate as previous tests. At this point StarHopper is still the most successful iteration.

[tater]

 

[RealKerbal3x]

Nice closeup view of the fairing being stacked.

I wonder if SN6 will get the aero surfaces we've recently seen arrive on site?

[AVaughan]

19 hours ago, tater said:

I still think a cargo version for the Moon should take those landing thrusters and rotate them to allow horizontal landing.

If they are concerned by the amount of dust/gravel blasted off the surface during landing, then they might prefer to keep the thrusters as high as practical to allow the exhaust to expand further before it hits the surface. 

Also since all cargo will be loaded, secured and launched with starship in a vertical orientation, it will make payload design, planning and handling easier if starship also lands vertically.

 

 

[tater]

1 hour ago, AVaughan said:

If they are concerned by the amount of dust/gravel blasted off the surface during landing, then they might prefer to keep the thrusters as high as practical to allow the exhaust to expand further before it hits the surface. 

Also since all cargo will be loaded, secured and launched with starship in a vertical orientation, it will make payload design, planning and handling easier if starship also lands vertically.

Excellent points.

[RCgothic]

I think it would be awesome If Starship jacked itself up on its landing legs leaving the cargo pods on the surface, Thunderbird 2 style. 

Bit impractical though. More likely to be removable skirt panels for access.