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https://youtu.be/Sdwy9fzQzl4 Scott Manley does a great job explaining such things!
I'm surprised the guy being a youtuber. He is the codecs guy at Apple Computers
I would love to know what the "Day-in-the-life" of a welder working on those ships would be. Did they train specifically for aerospace welding? How did they land that specific gig. Must be so inspiring to wake up and work on that.
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I'm surprised the guy being a youtuber. He is the codecs guy at Apple Computers
Isn't he an astronomer / astrophysicist? You must be talking about another Scott Manley.
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Starship could have Falcon Heavy level of delays (which I think it will) and still beat SLS.
Not entirely sure about that. Have no skin in the game but from what I can tell Starship is just a bigger version of the Falcon 9 second stage. FH on the other hand required a lot of engineering investment to figure out how to bolt three F9s together and how to make the software work between all three. I'm certain it will be a long time until it can get to Mars, but LEO within the next 2-3 years is probably realistic…
I know I'm piling on here with this quote but I just don't understand why you'd say this if you'd done the least amount of research. They are about as different as two rockets can be—do you think Starship is "just a bigger version" because it's an upper stage? Because it's built by the same company? Its design and (theoretical, until it flies) capabilities are radically different and expanded relative to F9 stage 2.
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I think this illustrates what someone who actually understands the engineering being in charge of a company can really do to revolutionize a field. If a non-engineer is in charge of a space company, they'll look at the popular science articles and assume that single launch is the only way to do things. They'll also assume that we just need to get the material science right to be able to do space elevators. They'll as…
I love how we've suddenly decided that all the solid engineering done in the space industry, for decades, was done by fools reading pop science. But now a "real engineer" is showing us the way. SpaceX is standing on the shoulders of giants.
But then Musk took over and once again a brilliant, innovative engineer was in charge, and so we are back to making real progress in space travel.
By the way, I am not talking about the space probe designers. They have been brilliant, and have produce an astounding series of scientific advances. But the rocket industry has stagnated.
380s for ISP for the Raptor vacuum engine seems durn good, considering the tradeoffs between hydrogen and methane. The most efficient engines we've flown, the RL-10 [0] (used on the Delta IV and Atlas rockets as part of the Centaur Upper Stage) and the RS-25 [1], (the Space Shuttle Main Engine) get around 450-460s for their specific impulse. These engines use liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen. The issue with liquid h…
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQTnWEHl5qU
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6YyV-otP3pI
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?&v=TOieURpnbm0
This appears to me to make each flight much more complicated to pull off, introducing more points for it to fail without contingencies, and it makes me nervous. But, again, I am an just an unenlightened observer from an unrelated field. I don't even play Kerbal Space Program! I'm sure they've weighed a million different options and their risks, and have arrived at this one after a lot of thinking, but it has been bugging me. The stainless steel construction certainly looks beautiful out there in Texas.
I 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…
How come no one thought of using steel before?
Some quotes from Elon Musk in the presentation: "If the schedule is long it's wrong, if it's tight its right." "The best part is no part." "The best process is no process." This really is different compared to how the space industry has done things in the past.
I 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.