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Starship's Twelfth Flight Test

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Re: Starship's Twelfth Flight Test

#71

Post by MadnessASAP »

bediger4000 wrote: post #39
john_minsk wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

question: what will happen if orbit refuelling goes wrong? Won't it destroy everything in orbit?

Liquid handling in microgravity has always been weird. Big gas bubbles in the fluid, surface tension effects causing liquid to float in balls in the ullage, stuff like that. Turbopumps break if they ingest a larger bubble. There could be some odd failure modes I would think. Failure to pump the liquid, broken pumps, who really knows? My guess would be that a failure mode would be a big spill, a failure to pump, only…

For something like a transfer between Starships you can resolve a lot of those problems by (very) gently spinning the 2 craft. It won't take much force for the liquids to settle at the bottom of their respective tanks where you would presumably put the intakes.

Re: Starship's Twelfth Flight Test

#73

Post by tristanj »

john_minsk wrote: post #35
GMoromisato wrote: post #32

There is a lot riding on V3. SpaceX cannot afford to take too many launches to get V3 solid. If 2026 is another 2025 (3 V2 failures in a row followed by 2 V3 successes), then they can forget about landing on the moon before 2030. My hope is that Flight 12 goes nearly flawlessly (at least gets to soft splashdown) and they can start testing in-space refueling in July/August. If they can demonstrate in-space refueling b…

question: what will happen if orbit refuelling goes wrong? Won't it destroy everything in orbit?

All Starship test launches are suborbital so if anything goes wrong, the ship and debris fall back to Earth.

Even if it was put in orbit, debris are not an issue because orbital decay at Low Earth Orbit (LEO) is significant. A satellite orbiting below 250km will fall back to earth within a few hours, and at 400km within a year. LEO below 500-600km has enough atmospheric drag to be self-cleaning.

Orbital debris are more significant issue at higher orbits 800km and above.

Re: Starship's Twelfth Flight Test

#74

Post by pixl97 »

purpleidea wrote: post #24

I don't know why they aren't doing more booster catches. Kind of a bit disappointed they keep skipping. Either they can land them or they can't. If it's not consistent then they're avoiding the possible failure so their stock price (launching soon) stays up, otherwise just prove it's solid and actually works.

>Either they can land them or they lose a billion dollars and 9 months when they crash the tower.

Re: Starship's Twelfth Flight Test

#76

Post by HerbManic »

maccam94 wrote: post #2

Dang, they aren't catching the booster this time, but I guess V3 is practically a new vehicle and validating the next Starship launch is probably too critical to risk damage to the launch site for now.

The booster catch is a useful trick but when the focus is just getting SS3 into orbit without incident, you can drop a few of the boosters in the ocean with the intent to fix at a later point.

Re: Starship's Twelfth Flight Test

#77

Post by HerbManic »

pixl97 wrote: post #4

There is a 70% chance for storms in the area tomorrow so it's very likely going to be a scrub tomorrow.

Possible, but that is still reasonable odds.

Reminds me of the line from The Naked Gun "Doctors give him a 50% chance of living, but there is only a 10% chance of that."

Re: Starship's Twelfth Flight Test

#78

Post by helterskelter »

stephc_int13 wrote: post #70
GMoromisato wrote: post #32

There is a lot riding on V3. SpaceX cannot afford to take too many launches to get V3 solid. If 2026 is another 2025 (3 V2 failures in a row followed by 2 V3 successes), then they can forget about landing on the moon before 2030. My hope is that Flight 12 goes nearly flawlessly (at least gets to soft splashdown) and they can start testing in-space refueling in July/August. If they can demonstrate in-space refueling b…

I am pretty sure that at least some SpaceX engineers are reading HackerNews. But I don't think I ever seen any insiders comments here, even anonymously.

I assume they'd be covered by a ludicrous NDA.

Re: Starship's Twelfth Flight Test

#79

Post by brynnbee »

GMoromisato wrote: post #32

There is a lot riding on V3. SpaceX cannot afford to take too many launches to get V3 solid. If 2026 is another 2025 (3 V2 failures in a row followed by 2 V3 successes), then they can forget about landing on the moon before 2030. My hope is that Flight 12 goes nearly flawlessly (at least gets to soft splashdown) and they can start testing in-space refueling in July/August. If they can demonstrate in-space refueling b…

Were any of them actually failures? My understanding is they push limits and create intentional weak points to see where it fails, and something failing isn't a mission failure but rather part of the research process.
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