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Starship's Tenth Flight Test

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Re: Starship's Tenth Flight Test

#211

Post by drawnwren »

avar wrote: post #96
dotnet00 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The push for rapid reusability seems somewhat at odds with the push for large scale production of ships. It seems like if they can get boosters to rapid reuse (a much easier goal), and churn out ships at sufficient scale, they can afford to take time inspecting/refurbing each ship as part of a pipelined approach.

If "rapid reusability" was a proxy goal for maintaining a given launch pace we wouldn't need any of this. We could just construct 200 Space Shuttles and spend months refurbishing them after every flight, and still send one up every week. The goal is to drive down launch costs, time is money, and a system that requires time consuming refurbishments is more expensive.

Mars transit takes far longer than one week. And their plan is in orbit refueling so getting a single starship to Mars takes more than one ship.

Re: Starship's Tenth Flight Test

#213

Post by nick49488171 »

mayama wrote: post #148
dotnet00 wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought that while the spare tiles did exist, there was never an actual safe procedure for replacing tiles (that didn't require being docked to the ISS) they were only carried to be available when the choice was between losing the entire crew on reentry or risking a crew member? I don't quite understand how the airplane shape made it easier to model the loading and positioning? (Not saying you're wrong, just doesn'…

> I don't quite understand how the airplane shape made it easier to model the loading and positioning? (Not saying you're wrong, just doesn't fit my intuition and I'm curious). You can approximate space shuttle reentry to roughly a 2d surface entering atmosphere. Because of airplane shape, the tile side faces atmosphere and the plasma goes around plane edges. Where as starship being cylinder doesn't have any separati…

IR reflectivity of stainless must help a good deal for the unshielded parts. I wonder if the internal surface is painted or finished in a way to help radiate the heat away internally.

Is there any active cooling of any of the skin that we know of?

Re: Starship's Tenth Flight Test

#214

Post by verzali »

sbuttgereit wrote: post #87
kragen wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it really a lot more technology? If they were landing 100 km away I'd agree, but aren't they basically reaching the required orbital speed and reentering and landing under retrorocket control? I'm no expert on orbital dynamics, so I might be missing something important.

They're never reaching orbital velocity on purpose. The reason is that they're still proving that they can fire rockets and deorbit under control; until they do that, any problem automatically puts the ship in the ocean no matter what while if they go to orbit and can't control the deorbit they end up possibly causing a disaster. Now, they are getting it to pretty damn close to orbital velocity... which is why saying…

Like turning back 300ft below the summit of everest because you aren't confident you have enough daylight to make it back if you do go for the top

Re: Starship's Tenth Flight Test

#215

Post by ralfd »

dotnet00 wrote: post #75
rlt wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They mentioned in the stream they were intentionally stressing the ship on reentry. But yes, “rapid reusability” is a ways off. I expect they’ll be spending weeks inspecting and repairing ship and booster before reflight for a few years, but they’ll drive it down over time. TBD how “rapid” the reusability ends up being in the end.

The push for rapid reusability seems somewhat at odds with the push for large scale production of ships. It seems like if they can get boosters to rapid reuse (a much easier goal), and churn out ships at sufficient scale, they can afford to take time inspecting/refurbing each ship as part of a pipelined approach.

> The push for rapid reusability seems somewhat at odds with the push for large scale production of ships.

Elon always talks about a city on Mars but seeing for the first time the gargantuan size of Starfactory it dawned on me that SpaceX are true believers. It is still a big IF, because the dimension of the mission is absolutely bonkers, but IF the goal is to send every two years hundreds of Starships to Mars (everyone needing around 3-4 tanker missions) you need large scale production of ships.

Re: Starship's Tenth Flight Test

#216

Post by bryanlarsen »

sbuttgereit wrote: post #131
bryanlarsen wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Starship returned safely. Safe return of orbital generally means a splashdown within 1500 miles of Point Nemo. They just demonstrated that they can splash down within meters of their target buoy. Even if the flaps failed completely they still would have been far less than 1500 miles off target.

They've done so more than than this time, too. Granted, with a little less "Ship" than they left with on all occasions I know of. No one (at least not me or anyone I take seriously) is arguing whether or not these suborbital profiles are designed to be safe even under adverse or full failure conditions; though the Caribbean air corridors might have been managed a bit more gracefully on some previous flights... still.…

Port Isabel is 6 miles away from Boca Chica. They demonstrated on a previous mission that they can land within meters of their target despite burnt out flaps. If SpaceX tries to catch Starship their launch tower might not be safe, but Port Isabel would be safe.

But they haven't tried to catch Starship yet and likely won't for a while, so you're arguing a silly hypothetical.

Re: Starship's Tenth Flight Test

#217

Post by lm28469 »

erulabs wrote: post #5

Unbelievable! Watched with my 4 year old, he was full of questions about why the ocean was turning to nighttime, what satellites are, about going to another planet, about the earth being so blue and if we “ever even knew that before”. Just wonderful stuff. So excited for the future.

Take a blanket, drive in an area with minimal light pollution, lay on the ground and watch the sky with your kid(s).

I did that with my grandma as a kid and to this day I don't think I've done anything more relaxing and interesting, it's like watching a fire or waves, it never gets old

Re: Starship's Tenth Flight Test

#218

Post by ralfd »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #159
dotnet00 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The intention is to need minimal to no replacement between flights. Part of the purpose of these tests is to figure out how to do that. The tiles themselves work fine, but how to best mount them? where do you need them? Can you make them thinner? do you need anything underneath? what kind of gap do you need between tiles? Those are the things they're hoping to understand in these tests. The Shuttle tiles were technic…

> Shuttle tiles were technically reusable Would note that Shuttle tiles were never mass manufactured. The Shuttle’s shape meant lots of unique tiles. And its lack of mass production meant each tile was basically an artisanal object. SpaceX aims to reüse tiles over many flights. But even if some tiles need replacing after each launch, that doesn’t tank Starship per se .

Maybe even throwing a used ship away as scrap metal away would work as a business case. The expensive part are the rocket engines, if they can be reused much would be won.

Re: Starship's Tenth Flight Test

#219

Post by ralfd »

pixl97 wrote: post #121
14 wrote: post #110

I can't help but think of one cray thing...This is absolutely amazing to watch. The fact that there are cameras at every stage showing exactly what is happening. Being able to see the curvature of earth all in hi-def. But the entire time I watch this I just keep thinking even with all this proof you still will not convince some people that the moon landings are real and that the earth is not flat. They will say these…

Yea, I'm older and remember the shuttle days. It's the video all the way to the ground that amazes me every time (well at least when the orbiter is aligned properly and not turning into a meteor shower).

Only possible through SpaceX Starlink, but technical progress aside they also deserve kudos to be so open to share some of their video streams publicly and not cutting away from explosions or burning flaps.

Blue Origin didn't show with the first New Glenn launch their payload mechanism or reentry mishaps.

Re: Starship's Tenth Flight Test

#220

Post by ralfd »

maxlin wrote: post #190

Exhilarating to see the V2 finally get its "fourth time's the charm" full success! My top reason for wanting to visit US has flipped semi-recently to wanting to witness one of these launches. I'd hate for the Boca Chica site to become more secretive as it marches on towards production quality.

The crazy thing is that hopefully in 2-3 years a Starship launch could be as "boring" as a dime-a-dozen Falcon 9 launch today.
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