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SpaceX discloses cause of Starship anomalies as it clears an FAA hurdle

arstechnica.com

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Re: SpaceX discloses cause of Starship anomalies as it clears an FAA hurdle

#321

Post by philwelch »

dghlsakjg wrote: post #260
misiti3780 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, wont it theoretically speed up and decrease international shipping + travel. We should be able to go from the US to Japan in an hour or two in the future.

Maybe. The fundamental physics involved in suborbital flights mean that you are likely experiencing sustained acceleration of 3+ Gs minimum. That is a lot, something near the max g force of a roller coaster but lasting for minutes. Combine that with the launch/landing zones needing to be many miles from anything, and it isn't really ready for primetime. Just for reference 1.3 Gs is the max sustained load you will fee…

So not only do I get there hours sooner, but the ride itself is more fun?

Re: SpaceX discloses cause of Starship anomalies as it clears an FAA hurdle

#322

Post by _moof »

The28thDuck wrote: post #273

How do investigators find leaks in a craft that has exploded? I imagine it’s difficult to determine (though evidently possible) whether a defect is in the design, or if it has been introduced by a defect in manufacturing/installation of parts like with Boeing.

I've designed sensor electronics for rockets. You would not believe how many sensors are on a rocket, especially one still under development.

Re: SpaceX discloses cause of Starship anomalies as it clears an FAA hurdle

#323

Post by AtlasBarfed »

bumby wrote: post #215
evilduck wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even SpaceX's methods of fail fast (and often explosively) is relatively cheap. SLS is doing it the hard and expensive way.

The downside is that rapid iteration doesn't always give the same insight in terms of scientific understanding. E.g., Design_A fails. We quickly pivot to Design_B, which works. However, we don't spend the time ultimately understanding why Design_A failed. This can be operationally great, but it can also risk conflating being lucky with being good. If you don't fundamentally understand why the thing failed the first t…

You're dealing with incredibly smart people here. Now of course perfect knowledge is almost impossible. But each of the designs is probably specked out with at least pluses and minuses and theory is as to whether or not the design is viable, which ways it will perform well or fail.

This is just basic science: theory experiment result.

And with all the documentation and instrumentation on the flights, The theories can be experimentally validated or invalidated.

This isn't like some agile programmer shoving in a couple hundred lines of code over the course of a one week sprint.

Re: SpaceX discloses cause of Starship anomalies as it clears an FAA hurdle

#324

Post by jasonwatkinspdx »

ortusdux wrote: post #54
rob74 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually I'd rather have such "bonkers" tests than the other extreme, like NASA not thinking about what could happen if pieces of foam from the external fuel tank impacted the Space Shuttle on launch until it was too late ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Columbia_disaste... ).

Or not thinking that an O-ring might experience temperatures below freezing in Florida https://priceonomics.com/the-space-shuttle-challenger-explos...

That one is a classic example of normalization of deviance. They knew there were temperature limits, but they'd pushed the boundary a bit in the past with no ill results, and so began to feel complacent about the risks of pushing them even further.

Re: SpaceX discloses cause of Starship anomalies as it clears an FAA hurdle

#325

Post by AtlasBarfed »

whimsicalism wrote: post #206
jwells89 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s so exciting to keep track of. Feels like everything I hoped to see happening in spaceflight back in the 90s and 00s is finally (maybe) becoming reality and absolutely shattering the stagnancy that had overcome the field, hopefully this time for good. If this pace can continue unabated, maybe it’s not too unrealistic to hope that my grandkids’ generation in a few decades has astronaut as one of their most aspired…

I am not sure if there is enough profitable space industry. Last I checked asteroid mining was not super feasible, but maybe some like space based solar.

Reliable, viable Starship means the military can rapid deploy a force anywhere in the world in an hour or two.

That would mean huge savings to the military in naval fleet investment, overseas bases. The military would likely pay SpaceX ongoing contracts of tens of billion dollars per year for that exclusive nation-state capability.

The growing Starlink constellation will sustain huge business.

NASA would fund additional missions with the reduced launch costs.

Space tourism and fast global travel is worth another 10 billion dollars annually.

Then there's space telescopes and instrumentation.

Space industry is completely TBD. Here's a kooky idea: how much is antimatter harvested from the solar wind worth? Near earth asteroid capture and mining may be feasible. Moon mining may be on the table.

Militarization of space is an inevitability, and starship provides the payload to get equipment into space.

Starship might provide the launch ability to deal with space junk.

Anyway, you drop the cost of launch by 10x-100x, THINGS WILL BECOME POSSIBLE.

Re: SpaceX discloses cause of Starship anomalies as it clears an FAA hurdle

#326

Post by timschmidt »

Sabinus wrote: post #296
panick21_ wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's nonsense. Sure Psyche has a lot of valuable materials on it, but so do mountains on earth, doesn't mean its great way to make money. There are things far closer to earth that are far easier to get to, and those things are also far smaller then Psyche and thus far easier to mine. The most serious space mining company right now is targeting near earth asteroids for platinum group metals.

The composition and purity of asteroids can be vastly different than on Earth.

Composition should actually be very similar if not identical. All were formed from the same accretion disk around the sun. Distribution of heavy elements within asteroids will be much different from the planets, however, due to the planets having had or still having molten cores.

Re: SpaceX discloses cause of Starship anomalies as it clears an FAA hurdle

#327

Post by kspacewalk2 »

panick21_ wrote: post #282
kspacewalk2 wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't hate him, I simply find his views on most (?) topics reprehensible, naive and/or delusional. I think he's doing great harm to his businesses by oversharing them. I particularly despise his pathetic bothsidesing of the war in which fascists are invading and murdering my relatives in my country of birth.

Name any private individual who has done more for the defense of Ukraine then Musk. Suggesting that a civil war will end in a cease fire along battle lines is a very common way for civil wars to end. Even if during those wars both sides absolutely are convinced that they will have total victory.

What "civil war" are you talking about? Was Hitler's invasion of Poland also a civil war and if so, what is a civil war in your mind?

Re: SpaceX discloses cause of Starship anomalies as it clears an FAA hurdle

#328

Post by AtlasBarfed »

njarboe wrote: post #56
Sanzig wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am pretty skeptical of Starship ever getting used for suborbital transportation, other than maybe for ultra-elite VIP transport or something like a rapid deployment system for military special forces. It seems highly unlikely they will ever get the price down to where it can compete with commercial airliners, and Concorde's commercial failure showed us that people will happily choose cheap subsonic flight over fast…

I think there is a pretty large market for a trip to space and an hour flight from LA to New Zealand, New York-Sydney, London-Shanghai, etc. for $10-20k. What an amazing combination that would be.

Think of this market:

The NFL wants to expand to Europe, Asia, South America badly. Problem is the logistics of Mach-1 air travel won't allow that. Same for the NBA, NHL, and MLB. A true world super league of futbol.

We're talking 10s of billions of dollars in new annual revenue for these sports leagues ... if they could transport a whole team anywhere in the world in 4-5 hours.

It costs a couple hundred thousand per flight for a team? Um, the Super Bowl brought in 600 million in ad revenue and probably another 50-200 million in ticket costs.

Re: SpaceX discloses cause of Starship anomalies as it clears an FAA hurdle

#329

Post by skissane »

dotnet00 wrote: post #21
Sebb767 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do those rockets have a fuel filter at all? I get why we have them in cars; we refuel quite often, in dirty environments and with possibly low quality fuel. For space rockets, it seems that it would be (comparatively) easy to ensure that the tanks are clean and the fuel is of high quality. On the other hand, if there wasn't any dirt, the filters would not have clogged, so I guess it does make sense after all.

Also meaningful to consider that as a vehicle meant to be reusable, it's going to be pretty much impossible to keep the tanks pristine over time unless they add a cleaning process that would be expensive and time consuming to every refurbishment (which runs counter to Starship's goal of rapid reusability). Relative to all other rockets, SpaceX's are refueled pretty often. Better to just design with filters.

> Better to just design with filters.

I wonder how frequently the filters need to be clean/changed? After every flight? After X flight hours?

And what is involved in changing them?

I imagine, initially at least, they'll remove all the engines after every flight, and that will give them easy access to inspect/clean/replace the filters, when necessary. However, I expect the longer term goal is they don't want to have to remove the engines after every flight, just like how a commercial aircraft doesn't have its engines removed after every flight.

Re: SpaceX discloses cause of Starship anomalies as it clears an FAA hurdle

#330

Post by wigiv »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #313
Covzire wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mini-factories in space could become a thing, supposedly a lot of industrial processes are only difficult because of friction and gravity.

I hear this touted a lot, but I never hear any specific examples. Do you know any?

There are quite a few specific examples, all on a spectrum of technical and economic feasibility, of course.

Here’s a great place to start: https://www.factoriesinspace.com/

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