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SpaceX launches Starship v3 rocket

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Re: SpaceX launches Starship v3 rocket

#251

Post by throwaway85825 »

wildzzz wrote: post #217
b112 wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just made me realise, this is just like the F-35. Its turn around time is ridiculous, it has to be maintained with specialized equipment/hangers, along with external contractor assistance. Compared to the Gripen, as an example, which can land on a freeway and be up in the air again in a few minutes. One was designed to be used in war, in desperate scenarios, with no ability to coddle it. The other, the F-35? Is desig…

The Gripen is a light multirole aircraft like the F-16. The F-35 is a stealth strike fighter. It requires another level of special care to maintain its stealth performance. If you want mass-produced stealth aircraft, that's what's required. Stealth aircraft up to this point have been in extremely limited numbers at astronomical costs.

The f35 has been produced in sufficient numbers that its purchase price is lower than that of 4th Gen fighters. The maintenance cost is higher though.

Re: SpaceX launches Starship v3 rocket

#252

Post by throwaway85825 »

whatevaa wrote: post #215
b112 wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just made me realise, this is just like the F-35. Its turn around time is ridiculous, it has to be maintained with specialized equipment/hangers, along with external contractor assistance. Compared to the Gripen, as an example, which can land on a freeway and be up in the air again in a few minutes. One was designed to be used in war, in desperate scenarios, with no ability to coddle it. The other, the F-35? Is desig…

Gripen will not be able to fly higher than tree lines in zones with active anti-air. Russia can't really use any of it's air power in Ukraine war, for example. F35 can actually do something in such scenarios, as detecting them in the first place is hard.

Russia can and did start the war with using airpower but stopped due to losses. Currently Russia is using its airpower to lob guided bombs which is effective due to the limited range of ukraines missiles. They have nothing comparable to the R33.

Re: SpaceX launches Starship v3 rocket

#253

Post by erkt »

Laremere wrote: post #15

Summary from my watch: - Launch roughly on time, after a scrub yesterday. (Sounds like the scrub was due to ground equipment, most notably the water system.) - Initial ascent was good, but then one engine on the booster went out. - Relight of the booster's engines after stage separation for the boost back burn failed. Engines did light again for a landing burn, but seems to have hit the water harder than expected and…

It was also noticeably wayyy faster off the launch mount. These V3 raptors are pretty fierce. It took off so fast it seems destined to be stretched imminently.

Re: SpaceX launches Starship v3 rocket

#254

Post by erkt »

GMoromisato wrote: post #96
Laremere wrote: post #15

Summary from my watch: - Launch roughly on time, after a scrub yesterday. (Sounds like the scrub was due to ground equipment, most notably the water system.) - Initial ascent was good, but then one engine on the booster went out. - Relight of the booster's engines after stage separation for the boost back burn failed. Engines did light again for a landing burn, but seems to have hit the water harder than expected and…

Good summary. I was pleasantly surprised that they nailed the re-entry target even after the ascent engine problems. The re-entry itself looks amazingly smooth compared to V2. TBD whether it's good enough for re-usability (much less rapid re-usability). But Flight 12 was definitely forward progress.

It looks like the ships software did a phenomenal job compensating by adding that much longer Second stage burn time. It was also very cool to see the sea levels vector to compensate for the thrust asymmetry. All and all that ship is look really realllllly good. Seems like they just need to add some mass to Raptor to reduce the tendency to tear itself apart..

Re: SpaceX launches Starship v3 rocket

#255

Post by throwaway85825 »

GolfPopper wrote: post #190
throwaway85825 wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a reason the Mig-29 is no longer in production. Point defense fights are obsolete. The F-35 was just in a war, in Iran. It performed as expected and was able to roll back Iran's air defense network in days.

> It performed as expected and was able to roll back Iran's air defense network in days. "Rolling back" Iran's air defense seems like very fuzzy phrasing. Certainly, Iran was not able to close its own airspace, nor prevent ongoing airstrikes on many American and Israeli targets. At the same time, my armchair observation is that a great many US and Israeli airstrikes were accomplished using stand-off weapons [1], whic…

Iran innovated with the loitering optically guided missile. This was enough to dissuade a longer air campaign. Political support is low so any losses create a political problem.

Re: SpaceX launches Starship v3 rocket

#256

Post by erkt »

fooblaster wrote: post #182
itsthecourier wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why won't it ever work?

The hardest problem in the entire design had yet to be solved. Having a robust human rated tile system that can be rapidly turned around is a huge engineering challenge that kind of breaks the whole point of the design if it doesn't work. I wouldn't be surprised if they eventually give up and go back to a cheaper throw away second stage, or throw out the tile design completely and try for some evaporative cooling app…

I really hope to see the evaporative cooling make a comeback but it seems unnecessary when it’s returning to earth right now.

It would also be interesting to see them do shallower dips into the atmosphere then pull back out and repeat. Like a skipping stone. Lots of expansion contraction, but might work better without tiles.

Re: SpaceX launches Starship v3 rocket

#257

Post by Dylan16807 »

fooblaster wrote: post #182
itsthecourier wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why won't it ever work?

The hardest problem in the entire design had yet to be solved. Having a robust human rated tile system that can be rapidly turned around is a huge engineering challenge that kind of breaks the whole point of the design if it doesn't work. I wouldn't be surprised if they eventually give up and go back to a cheaper throw away second stage, or throw out the tile design completely and try for some evaporative cooling app…

Well at least for one part of that, 90-something percent of the launches don't need to be human rated.

Re: SpaceX launches Starship v3 rocket

#258

Post by aeternum »

fooblaster wrote: post #183
laughing_man wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All what tiles breaking and needing repair? There was remarkably little visible damage this time around compared with previous flights. There's no materials science breakthrough needed -- the shuttle used ceramic tiles successfully its entire service life. What's needed is engineering work, and that's what SpaceX has been doing.

You know a whole the size of a quarter can wreck the entire spacecraft and make it effectively throw away? Also, you'd want to use this many times. Making a system robust while not requiring months of refurbishment is really really hard.

They already demonstrated that entire tiles can be removed without wrecking the spacecraft.

The quarter thing may have been true for the space shuttle, that doesn't make it true in general.

Re: SpaceX launches Starship v3 rocket

#259

Post by sneak »

modeless wrote: post #111
randallsquared wrote: post #41

The best part of this flight was seeing the full reentry with no visible hot spots or burn through like we've seen on every previous reentry of Starship. Seems like they have the heat shields really nailed.

Yes, reuse of the heat shield has been the biggest question mark of the whole program and this is by far the best result of any launch so far. This is the first time it looks plausible that you could consider reusing the heat shield.

Plausible? It was always plausible. This flight does nothing to increase or decrease that - it is still very much a wide open question. The goal is full rapid reusability, and nothing we have seen yet suggests that that is possible, because no Starship has flown twice, much less re-entered twice with the same non-refurbished tiles.

It may be that the heat shield is the thing that causes them to miss the BHAG. Starship will still be cool if it needs all-new tiles every flight but let’s not pretend that that would be anything but a miss for the program.

I sure hope they can figure it out.

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