1950s Science Fiction illustrators are feeling so vindicated right now.
That was my very first thought, seeing that image: Ray Bradbury would be absolutely beaming to see it.
Starship Prototype Unveiled
91–100 of 342 posts
Re: Starship Prototype Unveiled
#92I am so amazed by the genius of making it out of steel. It's just so completely counter intuitive but has accelerated their progress so much. If they told you the stats of the material, better strength at cryo tempertures meaning mass reduction, higher melting point meaning minimal heat shielding and great thermal conductivity it would be easy to imagine it was some new super composite. Then your head explodes when t…
I know there are 1000 of them 100x smarter than me at all of this, but I have my doubts that the specs for "cold rolled" stainless will hold up after tens of re-entries, as it is effectively being tempered over and over.
Re: Starship Prototype Unveiled
#93I suspect that Starship will fly to space before SLS ever will. I also think Starship has a significantly higher chance of flying at all than SLS.
It is certainly a little bold of Bridenstine to comment on other space companies being behind schedule given NASA’s own delays.
Well when you tell a customer you will have all hands on deck and then are out back playing with your go-kart then expect your billion dollar customer will say something.
Re: Starship Prototype Unveiled
#94I am so amazed by the genius of making it out of steel. It's just so completely counter intuitive but has accelerated their progress so much. If they told you the stats of the material, better strength at cryo tempertures meaning mass reduction, higher melting point meaning minimal heat shielding and great thermal conductivity it would be easy to imagine it was some new super composite. Then your head explodes when t…
I know there are 1000 of them 100x smarter than me at all of this, but I have my doubts that the specs for "cold rolled" stainless will hold up after tens of re-entries, as it is effectively being tempered over and over.
As of the last time I heard, SpaceX was planning to use an extremely aggressive active cooling system: cold fuel would be bled through many holes in the hull, in a process similar to sweating. The hull may never get above room temperature.
Re: Starship Prototype Unveiled
#95I'm surprised to hear Musk tone. He's not that friendly usually. Maybe it's because Tesla is a different business and its struggle got to him. Maybe it's because his inner child dreamt of this ship for decades..
I think it's been a good week for him. The Starship of course, but on the Tesla front they are coming up on the end of a quarter with record deliveries, shipping Smart Summon which might let them finally add the FSD revenue to the Tesla reports, etc.
In his starship talk he recalled how spacex was one failure away from bankruptcy. Crazy to imagine if spacex folded before even vertical landers..
Re: Starship Prototype Unveiled
#96Earlier quoted context omitted.
FH was 5 years+ behind schedule before it was built and launched. Starship already has multiple constructions going on, with multiple prototypes to test and multiple full-size vehicles planned quickly. In 2011, FH was supposed to have "arrival at launch site" by 2H 2012. It first launched in 2018 (after arriving at launch site in 2018 not 2012). The same level of delay would mean the first Starship does not reach orb…
FH is "just" 3 F9 strapped together. Doing that took them more than 5 years than planned. Keeping that in mind, having 5 year delay on brand new design, using totally different materials, new engine, etc isn't far fetched.
The FH released did not have the payload capacity they originally intended. The mid-launch fuel bussing was critical to that, and abandoned. Instead they managed to squeeze out more thrust from the engines and make up some of the difference.
Re: Starship Prototype Unveiled
#97I am so amazed by the genius of making it out of steel. It's just so completely counter intuitive but has accelerated their progress so much. If they told you the stats of the material, better strength at cryo tempertures meaning mass reduction, higher melting point meaning minimal heat shielding and great thermal conductivity it would be easy to imagine it was some new super composite. Then your head explodes when t…
I know there are 1000 of them 100x smarter than me at all of this, but I have my doubts that the specs for "cold rolled" stainless will hold up after tens of re-entries, as it is effectively being tempered over and over.
Not a metallurgist but doesn't tempering make steel stronger? (As long as it is quenched properly?)
Re: Starship Prototype Unveiled
#98I just want to point out that SpaceX has not yet successfully put a human in LEO. The moon seems well beyond their technical capabilites at the moment and Mars seems like a fools dream at this point in time.
Try to relax.
Re: Starship Prototype Unveiled
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hopper shows that engine works outside of test lab. That's great, but it's far far away from showing that they solved most of the hard problems. Experience from FH and F9 is useful, but it's a totally different type of spacecraft, with different use-cases, different materials, engines, cooling, etc. There's TONS of new stuff that they have to research, experiment, fail, try again, etc, until it's doing even 50% of wh…
Perhaps I'm misunderstanding something. I thought Hopper was not about Raptor tests but about VTOL as well. The FH had to wait while F9 got down the vertical landing science and engineering (though a lot of tests, explosions, delays). StarHopper seems like it can use those learnings, and that was tested recently. The engine was already functioning on a test stand and mated to Hopper for static fires; the Hopper hop i…
I'm not sure I would call starship VTOL maybe vertical takeoff acrobatic landing? I'm sure falcon helped a lot, especially with control surface actuation resilliency, but I think they still have a lot to learn about this amazing new maneuver.
They are building 4 partially functional prototypes to mess up and learn stuff fast.
Re: Starship Prototype Unveiled
#100Earlier quoted context omitted.
I know there are 1000 of them 100x smarter than me at all of this, but I have my doubts that the specs for "cold rolled" stainless will hold up after tens of re-entries, as it is effectively being tempered over and over.
As of the last time I heard, SpaceX was planning to use an extremely aggressive active cooling system: cold fuel would be bled through many holes in the hull, in a process similar to sweating. The hull may never get above room temperature.
No, the "sweating methane" cooling is no longer happening (per the presentation/q&a last night). Instead they're using ceramic insulating heat shield tiles - similar to the shuttle, but different materials, very different attachment mechanism, and a regular shape (tiles will all be hexagonal)