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SpaceX’s monstrous, dirt-cheap Starship may transform space travel

economist.com

181–190 of 431 posts

Re: SpaceX’s monstrous, dirt-cheap Starship may transform space travel

#181

The thing that's impressive to me, in addition to the sheer size of these machines, is the engines . The Raptor 2 is groundbreaking. And there's 30+ of them between both stages. It's just incredible, and there's nothing like it that's been done.

As I recall, the Soviet moon rocket failed because it had a cluster of engines that they could never get to work together. The Saturn V had a cluster of only 5, and barely were able to get that to work. How did Musk solve this problem?

Falcon Heavy has 27 main engines, I don't think they're going to have a problem with 33.

Re: SpaceX’s monstrous, dirt-cheap Starship may transform space travel

#182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their goal is to create a ship that‘s up to the task of setting up colonies on Mars. Their estimate is that at least 1 million metric tons of cargo to the surface of Mars are required for that. Favorable launch windows to Mars are occurring every two years. With a cargo mass capacity of 100t per ship, over a span of 20 years (=10 launch windows) that would still require 1000 launches per launch window in average. Let…

Are there really that few launch windows? I assume it's because this ship is larger than the others we've been launching all this time?

Yes. When you leave is extremely important as its mostly about the relative alignment of the planets. You can trade a massive amount of fuel to get their faster, but waiting a month can sometimes shave 3 months off the travel time.

If you left on August 25 2022, you will arrive in July 2023. If you waited 1 month to leave, and left on September 26 2022 you would arrive in May 2023, months before the people who left earlier.

This is all according to: https://trajbrowser.arc.nasa.gov/traj_browser.php

Re: SpaceX’s monstrous, dirt-cheap Starship may transform space travel

#184
post #15

If you're ever in the Houston area, I highly recommend going to see NASA Johnson Space Center. They have a full-size replica (?) Saturn V rocket on its side, you can see. You simply can't grasp how big these rockets are until you see it up close. It's like a tall building blasting off into space. They're humongous. I hope to one day see Starship up close in person as it takes off to space.

In Huntsville AL they have one stood up outside a museum right off the highway - it’s insane to see

It's the US Space and Rocket Center for anyone looking it up. The vertical rocket is a replica. The sideways one is real, or mostly real. It's suspended pretty high up so you can walk below it. They host a weekly Oktoberfest event under it for a few months a year. In addition to the museum, they also give bus tours of NASA MSFC.

There's a planetarium nearby with a cool history made from the dome of an oxygen tank. UAH has a special collections room dedicated to the Apollo program. There are some other rockets on the side of the interstate near the outskirts to let you know you're entering rocket city.

If you plan carefully, you can see everything in a day.

Re: SpaceX’s monstrous, dirt-cheap Starship may transform space travel

#185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I recall, the Soviet moon rocket failed because it had a cluster of engines that they could never get to work together. The Saturn V had a cluster of only 5, and barely were able to get that to work. How did Musk solve this problem?

> How did Musk solve this problem? SpaceX haven't, yet. > As I recall, the Soviet moon rocket failed because it had a cluster of engines that they could never get to work together. The Saturn V had a cluster of only 5, and barely were able to get that to work. N-1 rocket had many troubles with the engines, but it wasn't specifically due to the number of engines: the NK-15 engine couldn't be test fired, vs the Raptor…

Yes they have. The falcon heavy has 27 engines. How are you so confidently saying they haven’t?

Re: SpaceX’s monstrous, dirt-cheap Starship may transform space travel

#186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their goal is to create a ship that‘s up to the task of setting up colonies on Mars. Their estimate is that at least 1 million metric tons of cargo to the surface of Mars are required for that. Favorable launch windows to Mars are occurring every two years. With a cargo mass capacity of 100t per ship, over a span of 20 years (=10 launch windows) that would still require 1000 launches per launch window in average. Let…

I'm not all that familiar with orbital transfers and costs. Given the 20 year time frame and launch quantities needed, is a favorable transfer window always needed (I'm probably asking if it is always cheapest)? Seems like there's going to be stuff being sent up that would be totally fine slowly cruising to Mars in three years instead of one. Receiving a thousand shipments from space sounds approximately as hard as s…

Earth and Mars orbit around the sun. Sometimes they're on the same side of the sun, sometimes they're on opposite sides.

Using extra fuel you can make launch windows larger, but they're going to come every 26 months no matter what you do.

Re: SpaceX’s monstrous, dirt-cheap Starship may transform space travel

#187
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Cheaper and larger payload capacities will ultimately change the industry ... is there sufficient demand there for this ambitious launch vehicle? What else will it be used for? extended weekend around Moon in cattle class for say $100K/person. Suborbital flight LA to Shanghai in 1 hour for $5-10K. Though it seems that the first years the SpaceX Mars program will gobble almost all the capacity (according to that rece…

> extended weekend around Moon in cattle class for say $100K/person. But how long does this actually last? The amount of people that can afford to pay that is minimal, I dont see space tourism driving any serious markets for an extremely long time (if ever). And there is a reason point to point transfer isnt being mentioned anymore. The logistics and regulatory hurdles are going to be massive, and I seriously doubt w…

>The amount of people that can afford to pay that is minimal

average American wedding is close to $30K, so i think there is a large market at the top. Plus corporations with their outings/offsite/etc. for S/E/VPs flying business class to nice places, influencers/promotions/raffles, midlife crisis and retired doctors, lawyers, execs as well as tens (if not a hundred) of thousands of young FAANG employees making $500K+/year. It is just that Virgin Galactic and Bezos unfortunately don't do justice to the coming space tourism.

>The logistics and regulatory hurdles are going to be massive

That really hinges on whether Starship will reach airline level of safety which is a huge undertaking and naturally at least several thousand of launches away. Those coming several thousands of launches anyway are planned for bringing into orbit those several millions of tons destined in particular for Mars. I.e. i just don't see any spare capacity from Starship. As far as i see it will be utilized 110%.

Re: SpaceX’s monstrous, dirt-cheap Starship may transform space travel

#188
post #5

If only we could lower that peskty 1% chance of exploding each flight down a smidge. Well, at least this means the rockets will be cheaper to replace!

What's the source for the 1%? It's not even flown into space yet. Its extremely high flight rate makes it likely that its reliability will be closer to planes than rockets eventually.

https://www.spacelaunchreport.com/log2020.html

Soyuz is the only rocket that has flown much more than 100 flights, and it has a reliability of 97%.

Several other rockets, including Falcon 9, have flown enough successful flights that statistically their reliability is unlikely to be less than 99%, but we cannot know that it's any higher than that.

NASA figures that the failure rate of a Dragon flight is about 1 in 500, but that's based on analysis rather than statistics and is likely quite wrong. Note that the highest chance of failure in their analysis is a micrometeorite collision rather than a rocket failure.

Re: SpaceX’s monstrous, dirt-cheap Starship may transform space travel

#190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The design is now thoroughly outdated. It wouldn't be cost-effective to reproduce a Saturn V as-is. The equivalent rocket is the Starship, which clearly can be built. Technologies like 3D printing, new alloys, better fuels, modern computers, etc... have made dramatic differences to the design and construction of these rockets. Have a look at the circuitry used on the Saturn V: http://www.righto.com/2020/04/a-circuit-…

>The design is now thoroughly outdated. Not really, fundamentals doesn't change that much. Starship is not equivalent, it is entirely new, different category. >better fuels, modern computers, etc... have made dramatic differences to the design and construction of these rockets. Saturn V used RP1 and LH2 fuels, both are still widely used. Gas generator cycles are also used in modern engines. You can have smaller compu…

RP1 deposits too much coke in the engines to allow reuse, or even extensive static test firing.

LH2 is stupid dangerous to use, requires physically large rockets due to the low density, and as I mentioned, requires extensive leak detection to be integrated into the design.

Super-chilled methane as used by Starship is "just better".

You really should read through the Saturn V manuals and documentation. NASA put a lot of it up online. Technology has moved on from then.

At the time, cost was no object, so they used approaches that wouldn't be acceptable now. For example, the cooling of the engines used hand-brazed tubing, which is crazy expensive to manufacture and test to the required safety level.

Modern engines simply use CNC machining to cut channels into a solid wall, then a plate is brazed on top. Much simpler to manufacture, much cheaper, much safer.

But CNC machining didn't exist back in the Saturn V days! This is the point. We wouldn't "do it that way" any more, because we have tools that they didn't have. Conversely, they had workers readily available that had skills that are not in demand any more, which would cause a hiring bottleneck if the construction of the rocket was attempted today.

Designs don't exist in a vacuum, in some abstract space of "raw materials go directly into the finished product". Designs are made for the wider landscape of the industrial base and the available engineering skillset.

There is no practical way to take the Saturn V design as-is and manufacture it today. It's possible, just not practical, let alone cost-effective.

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