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Starship Prototype Unveiled

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Re: Starship Prototype Unveiled

#101

Post by brandonjm »

frankharv wrote: post #93
brandonjm wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is certainly a little bold of Bridenstine to comment on other space companies being behind schedule given NASA’s own delays.

Well when you tell a customer you will have all hands on deck and then are out back playing with your go-kart then expect your billion dollar customer will say something.

I imagine all the necessary hands are already on deck for Crew Dragon.

Starship wasn’t built by the Falcon or Crew Dragon manufacturing teams, and the vast majority of the design and engineering currently happening for Starship has long been completed for Crew Dragon.

Let’s also remember that NASA is hardly the only company that pays SpaceX, they have other income sources and what they do with that income is ultimately their choice. Unless they are using NASA money to build Starship there should be no problem.

Re: Starship Prototype Unveiled

#102

Post by Rediscover »

DennisP wrote: post #90
newguynewguy wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren't there some pretty serious health and ecological problems with such large-scale microwave transmission?

Not really. Even at the intended target, it's diffuse enough not to raise body temperature much. Birds could fly through without harm. Under the antenna, there'd be very little microwaves leaking through. Aim anywhere without a homing signal and you lose the coherent beam, making it much more diffuse.

iirc, Novar Conrols/Novar Electronics out of Barberton Ohio (at the time) was testing the phased arrays using bees and their hives and what ever else got in the area. Oh, yeah, and apparently some of the engineers and the boss.

(I used to work in a lab there next to some of the equipment and one day I asked my good friend about it - he had been there for decades.)

Re: Starship Prototype Unveiled

#103

Post by [deleted] »

nordsieck wrote: post #52
nexuist wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Starship is just a bigger version of the Falcon 9 second stage Starship is designed to land from interplanetary speeds (not just LEO orbital speeds), can re-fuel in orbit, and has the world'd most advanced rocket engines. The jump from F9 -> Starship is substantially larger than the jump from F9 -> FH. edit: spelling

[deleted]

Re: Starship Prototype Unveiled

#104

Post by zamadatix »

jniedrauer wrote: post #59
RivieraKid wrote: post #56

I've had to dismiss 3 popups after opening the article on mobile. This is ridiculous.

If you have ublock origin, it redirects you to a "please disable adblocking" page. Blocking scripts prevents the redirect.

On uBlock Origin you'll want to enable all of the additional filter lists (except the regions/languages section). Doing so blocks the redirect automatically.

Re: Starship Prototype Unveiled

#105

Post by elif »

Blakestr wrote: post #97
elif wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know there are 1000 of them 100x smarter than me at all of this, but I have my doubts that the specs for "cold rolled" stainless will hold up after tens of re-entries, as it is effectively being tempered over and over.

Not a metallurgist but doesn't tempering make steel stronger? (As long as it is quenched properly?)

Stronger is not a specific enough term with metal, but tempering is the opposite of what you described, which is hardening.

Steel becomes harder and more brittle if quenched (hardening), and softer and less brittle if cooled slowly (tempering).

Cold Rolling steel is done to avoid the heat cycle which would otherwise result in tempering, which is why its specific stats don't strike me as particularly relevant past the first launch.

Heat cycles also have the effect of warping steel.

Re: Starship Prototype Unveiled

#106

Post by hinkley »

Blakestr wrote: post #97
elif wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know there are 1000 of them 100x smarter than me at all of this, but I have my doubts that the specs for "cold rolled" stainless will hold up after tens of re-entries, as it is effectively being tempered over and over.

Not a metallurgist but doesn't tempering make steel stronger? (As long as it is quenched properly?)

Tempering is used to reduce brittleness in metal.

But I think the word GP was looking for was annealing. Annealed metal bends quite easily (that's the analogy in 'simulated annealing' in optimization theory). For instance the wire bonsai practitioners use is traditionally made of annealed copper. Copper is already pretty ductile but once annealed it's positively floppy. Bending it work-hardens it, causing it to stiffen back up. Eventually one learns that if you bend it just so, it will stay where you wanted it to stay.

You do not want your space craft reconfiguring itself.

Re: Starship Prototype Unveiled

#107

Post by narrator »

hwillis wrote: post #24
martythemaniak wrote: post #21

That was a very dense an informative presentation last night, but I think the main take away is that rapid reusability is a game changer. In fact, game-changer is probably an understatement, basically every intuition and rule-of-thumb we have about space launches and travel will have to be rethought. And this will be true even of SpaceX falls well short of meeting their stated targets (2020 orbit, 150t capability, mu…

SpaceX is completely changing the opportunities of getting to space. The reduction in price has been nuts. According to NASA the space shuttle was ~$450 million per launch, or $16,364 per kg to LEO. The Delta 4 Heavy is $12,156 per kg. For some launches it's even higher- the Air Force paid $15,109 per kg for four launches. The Falcon 9 is $62 million, or $2,719 per kg to LEO. The Falcon Heavy is $2,351 per kg when ex…

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 assume that the only way to get into space is to get bigger and bigger space budgets. That will increase shareholder profits after all.

When you have an actual engineer running the company, they can question all those assumptions. They can take everything apart and put it back together again in different ways and question the assumptions of the "thought leaders" in the space.

In a way, this outside "thought leadership" by research institutes has hindered science by leading researchers given grants to carefully conserve and develop their pet solution to a problem that they are an authority on. If their idea falls out of favor, then they will lose their grant money. It's the extreme version of the innovator's dilemma. An entrepreneurial engineer just wants to get the job done. If they can't deliver a great product, they'll lose their revenue stream. If they can leapfrog the competition by capitalizing on their innovator's dilemma, then they'll move to true greatness.

Re: Starship Prototype Unveiled

#108

Post by hinkley »

drchewbacca wrote: post #89

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…

Didn't the Russians use a lot of steel in their Space Age era rockets? It always seemed to me like we went too high tech too quickly and the Soviets were practical to a fault, and the truth should be something in between.

Re: Starship Prototype Unveiled

#109

Post by afterburner »

kbenson wrote: post #46
baybal2 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm surprised the guy being a youtuber. He is the codecs guy at Apple Computers

Eh, it's just another form of blog at this point. Not the greatest for searching, but a valid medium for expression.

It's also great self-marketing.

Re: Starship Prototype Unveiled

#110

Post by afterburner »

drchewbacca wrote: post #89

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…

> Imo Elon is starting to get into contention for greatest engineer of all time.

I don't know man, did he design it himself?

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