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Starship / Super Heavy

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Re: Starship / Super Heavy

#201

Post by tjah1087 »

dxdm wrote: post #197
iso947 wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

About that yes, but remember that a fully loaded starship in orbit can land on any solid surface in the solar system and return to earth (except for Venus) Starship’s usable volume is over 100 times that of an Apollo lunar lander.

I don't get it, how does that answer the question about the economics of lifting fuel into orbit? Could you elaborate your point?

I think they are trying to imply that refueling a starship in orbit is worth it, whatever the cost - it gives a capability we didn't have before.

Re: Starship / Super Heavy

#202

Post by childintime »

zaroth wrote: post #65
wongarsu wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Super Heavy Booster has an order of magnitude more engines than the Starship prototype that did the 12km hop. I don't think Starship can reach orbit without the booster (it can reach space, but not orbital velocity)

Sounds levels in particular will be extreme at launch (as in, deadly even outside the blast radius). And there's a lot more fuel that could potentially explode over populated areas on the way into orbit. For this reason, I think the intent is for Superheavy launches to be mainly done far out at sea. But Boca is needed in the interim for testing purposes.

> Sounds levels in particular will be extreme at launch (as in, deadly even outside the blast radius)

Though that's generally true, Everyday Astronaut watched the SN8 launch up "close" and reported the sound was (relatively) mild. Indeed the raptors sounded differently, with less of the violent "cracking up". There may be a bit of a surprise coming here.

Re: Starship / Super Heavy

#203

Post by GordonS »

zlsa wrote: post #48
doomlaser wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm really interested in seeing how it will perform its "belly flop" landing. Seems like a high risk maneuver https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdTYMry7fq0#t=1m17s

They've already done it[0], and it was a complete success until a propellant pressure issue resulted in lower than needed thrust, and a hard impact on the pad. [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qwLHlVjRyw

Wow, that's surely one of the most amazing feats of human achievement I've ever witnessed - incredible!

Re: Starship / Super Heavy

#204

Post by paranoidrobot »

beaner wrote: post #168
randallsquared wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe it requires a refuel in orbit to get to the moon. So, two missions, but still super impressive.

Genuine question, how will tankers get into space? If most of the ship's size is already dedicated to fuel that's burnt, that seems to leave little left for fuel payload. I also assume fuel payload would be much heavier than other types of payload, requiring more ship fuel to launch it, further taking up space. It seems like for every full refill you could provide in space it'd take an additional 3-4 ships just to ge…

The plan, at least as originally described is to have (at least) three variants of Starship: One for passengers, one for bulk cargo, and a tanker.

Each would be launched atop the common Super Heavy booster.

Depending on the trip, a passenger Starship would do an on-orbit refuelling from the tanker variant.

Re: Starship / Super Heavy

#205

Post by nickik »

fnord77 wrote: post #77
mabbo wrote: post #9

> The fully integrated Starship/Super Heavy launch vehicle will be approximately 400 feet tall and 30 feet in diameter. For reference, the Saturn V rocket from the Apollo program was 363 feet tall. It was 33 ft wide at the first stage, while Starship is 30 ft wide all the way to the top. It's just massive. And it's fully reusable. What a game changer.

considering this is over 50 years after Saturn V, I don't feel this is such a huge feat.

It can actually land. The Saturn V cost absurd amounts of money and used gigantic amounts of army of people.The Starship program also wants to solve many problem that the Saturn V or even Apollo didn't.

Re: Starship / Super Heavy

#206

Post by GordonS »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #177
flenserboy wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While it will be fun to see humans on Mars, the really interesting stuff is further out. Where large lifters like this will really shine is in allowing automated mining factories to be sent to various space rocks in order to allow further, larger projects to be built in place. Musk has been piggybacking technologies to fund future projects — I don't see Mars as an endpoint for his vision, and Mars will be a cash sink…

> While it will be fun to see humans on Mars, the really interesting stuff is further out. Where large lifters like this will really shine is in allowing automated mining factories to be sent to various space rocks in order to allow further, larger projects to be built in place. The way I see it, a lot of interesting things are closer than Mars. There's plenty of space rocks near Earth, that could be nudged into Eart…

> There's plenty of space rocks near Earth, that could be nudged into Earth orbit

As a lay person, this sounds kind of dangerous - wouldn't there be a risk of the rock hurtling towards earth and causing a huge impact?

Re: Starship / Super Heavy

#207

Post by baq »

maccam94 wrote: post #127
dangoldin wrote: post #50

Got lost in a rabbit hole after reading this news. Most incredible thing to me was that due to the reusability the per launch costs may end up being $2M (vs $185 million in 1969–1971 dollars - $1.23 billion in 2019 value for the Saturn V).

Note that the $2M is to launch a fully loaded (100 tons of payload) Starship into low earth orbit (LEO). Launching it further, such as to the Moon or Mars, requires refueling while in-orbit. I've seen estimates from Musk that it would take 6-7 launches of a tanker variant of Starship to deliver enough fuel to fill an empty Starship (it could be stockpiled in an orbital depot ahead of the main payload launch). So the…

ask any astronomer what they could do with extra $150M per launch and watch them salivate. also, this thing could lift JWST pretty much without that complex unfolding mechanism. genuinely exciting.

Re: Starship / Super Heavy

#208

Post by nickik »

juanbyrge wrote: post #152
blackrock wrote: post #141

What are the odds of Starship working? It seems really complex. And that last phase where the ship flips vertical from the bellyflop, looks insane for human passengers inside. How many G’s is that maneuver pulling? SN8 appears 90% successful, but I’m wondering if that remaining 10% is the killer. As they say: You spend 10% of your time, solving 90% of your problem. And then you spend 90% of your time, solving the las…

I don’t mean to trivialize what SpaceX is accomplishing, but maybe we are overestimating the degree of difficulty of building rockets in the 21st century, given the advances in technology over the past few decades? With the immense improvement in compute power, materials, accelerometers, welding techniques, etc.. since the 60s, maybe SpaceX was the first to recognize that building rockets is not as hard as it used to…

Well, we actually have a large amount of companies trying to do it. Like 40-60 different companies. Not to mention government projects.

Of all of those, only RocketLab has managed to do it, and their rocket is basically as tiny as you can build a orbital rocket.

SpaceX did an orbital rocket bigger then RocketLab in 2008. RocketLab doesn't yet have real competition, despite many billions invested.

SpaceX at the same time went from the tiny Falcon 1 to a gigantic Starship program more ambitious then Saturn V and Apollo.

I think we do our self a dissevers by just saying 'well, we have computers now so its easy'. Given how many people have tried and how many have failed or taken many, many years longer then they thought, it is clearly not easy at all.

And mass producing them reliably is even harder.

SpaceX and Elon Musk are clearly special and unique. Something we have never seen before.

Re: Starship / Super Heavy

#209

Post by TeMPOraL »

ben_w wrote: post #195
TeMPOraL wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You may be forgetting a bunch of other countries that do space together, and as a group they have "the supply chain, manpower, funding, and infrastructure to build large scale commercial access to space", and are members of NATO. That said, I haven't seen as much interest in commercial space launch vehicles over here as I'd like to.

I hope the European version of Musk/SpaceX attempts a non-rocket based launch system. Whoever eventually surpasses SpaceX almost certainly won’t be doing so by chasing after SpaceX‘s strengths.

> a non-rocket based launch system

Do we have any feasible non-rocket options to do on Earth, though? Air-breathing first stage is all I can think of (but it's essentially still a rocket). Skyhooks and space elevators will have to wait for advances in materials science and will require orbital manufacturing capabilities. Launch loops seem to be too complicated either. Mini launch loops / big guns / other constructs that provide all kinetic energy at ground level won't work because of atmosphere density, and even if you had magic materials that'd survive hypersonic shocks and G forces, it'd still be a ridiculous waste of energy compared to rockets.

At this point I think we don't need anyone surpassing SpaceX, we just need more people copying them. In of itself, it'll drive launch costs further down.

Re: Starship / Super Heavy

#210

Post by childintime »

mkl wrote: post #183
valuearb wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ironically Mercury is definitely more inhabitable than Venus.

I don't think so. 50km up in Venus's atmosphere, the pressure and temperature are suitable for humans (though the atmosphere is not breathable), and human-suitable atmosphere is a lifting gas (like helium on Earth), so floating stations or cities are probably possible: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonization_of_Venus Mercury on the other hand swings in temperature from uninhabitably cold to about as hot as Venus's…

People who bring this up seem to miss that there is likely no practical way out of the Venus clouds. You'd be stuck until some next generation rocket tech comes along.

Remember Venus has about 91% of earth mass, so a significant rocket would be needed to get into orbit. Maybe Starship could be a capable single stage LVO transporter, but I have difficulty seeing it floating in the clouds, fully topped up, tethered to a balloon.

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